Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset

Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset

[Karen Shaeffer]

Hi folks,

I have an IBM A31 with the pci bus Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01) that
supports 802.11b wireless. I've googled around for quite awhile but am not
convinced I have answered my questions.

I have wireless up and running on the laptop with a 2.4.19 kernel. It's a
red hat 8.0 distribution on the computer. But there is some indication from
my google searches that this Prism 2.5 based system won't perform well with
the mainstream kernel's orinoco driver. Folks suggest the wlan-ng driver from 

http://www.linux-wlan.com/linux-wlan/

I'd like to stick with the main kernel code. I see in the kernel archives
that there are related patches going into the 2.5.x kernel. Which kernel
version is best suited for my needs? 

Finally, I have installed a pci to pcmcia converter and an orinoco gold
pcmcia card on a pc that I want to use to establish an access point with.
Does the kernel currently support this? If so, what version?

Thank you for any comments.

cheers,
Karen
-- 
 Karen Shaeffer
 Neuralscape; Santa Cruz, Ca. 95060
 shaeffer@neuralscape.com  http://www.neuralscape.com

Re: Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset

[Jules Kongslie]

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On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 15:30, Karen Shaeffer wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I have an IBM A31 with the pci bus Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01) that
> supports 802.11b wireless. I've googled around for quite awhile but am not
> convinced I have answered my questions.

I've got the same machine. Nice, isn't it?

> I have wireless up and running on the laptop with a 2.4.19 kernel. It's a
> red hat 8.0 distribution on the computer. But there is some indication from
> my google searches that this Prism 2.5 based system won't perform well with
> the mainstream kernel's orinoco driver. Folks suggest the wlan-ng driver from 
> 
> http://www.linux-wlan.com/linux-wlan/

That's what I do. The linux-wlan-ng prism_pci driver is much stabler on
my machine than the in-kernel code. The only problem is that, depending
on the kernel version you're using, you might have to make small changes
to the code so that it's using the same version of the wireless
extensions.

> I'd like to stick with the main kernel code. I see in the kernel archives
> that there are related patches going into the 2.5.x kernel. Which kernel
> version is best suited for my needs? 

I have a fine time with 2.4.19-ac4 and linux-wlan-ng 0.1.16-pre1. If you
want to use the in-kernel code, I'd suggest using the newest 2.5 you can
get working -- but you won't have a very easy time with it. The kernel
code seems to have a tendency to drop quite a few packets.

> Finally, I have installed a pci to pcmcia converter and an orinoco gold
> pcmcia card on a pc that I want to use to establish an access point with.
> Does the kernel currently support this? If so, what version?

That it typically called a "PLX" card, and both the kernel orinoco
drivers and the linux-wlan-ng drivers support them. Again, I suggest the
linux-wlan-ng modules above the kernel code.

> Thank you for any comments.
> 
> cheers,
> Karen

-- 
Jules Kongslie <chatos@omgwallhack.org>

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Re: Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset

[Wolfgang Wegner]

Hi,

concerning all intersil-based cards, the linux-wlan-ng driver seems much
more efficient than the in-kernel or pcmcia-cs code. However, linux-wlan-ng
supports only prism cards.

In general, if you have a low-performance machine, go for a real PCI card
(like one of those mini-pci boards on a pci adaptor card, like the Tekram
PC-400 or what it's name is). The pcmcia cards (at least those non-cardbus,
i did not have my hands on a cardbus card yet) impose a great load on the
machine for transferring the data over the "ISA" bus.
(That's another big problem of the in-kernel and pcmcia-cs "orinoco" drivers:
for full-size packets, interrupts are blocked for almost 1ms for every
packet. Not a problem on a GHz machine, but ugly on a 75MHz pentium 8) )

Regards,
Wolfgang