Networking :: Dynex PCMCIA WiFi (Best Buy house brand)

Hi All,

I'm thinking of buying one of the following PCMCIA cards for my laptop for use with this distribution.

Has anybody tried any of these cards and with what results, good or bad?

I've checked the cards with the ndiswrapper list and the first card is listed there... but is the ndiswrapper in this distribution at a version level high enough to run the card?

Both cards are Best Buy house brands, one has higher rated speed than the other.

From my research, they are Atheros chipset. I also see good reviews from the Ubuntu users, but I don't know if that's pertinent for us.

DX-WGNBC
Best Buy listing
From ndiswrapper:
#86
Dynex DX-WGNBC
* Chipset Atheros
* pciid: 168c:001a (rev 01)
* driver net5211.inf and ar5211.sys off the CD
* Other: Ubuntu breezy (5.10).

DX-WGPNBC
Best Buy listing
Not listed at ndiswrapper.

Atheros chipsets don't need ndiswrapper, they have native drivers.. Unless you need wpa encryption, that isn't fully functional with the native drivers..

I'd prefer to use WPA encryption.

I assume that your reply means that there is a chance the card might work in WEP right out of the box?

Is it painful to add the WPA layer? Is wpa_supplicant the only way to do it? Is wpa_supplicant already available for DSL?

They do work out-of-the-box with WEP.

I can't say much about adding WPA, it should be supported natively, but the drivers in DSL are too old (I think the new ones do support WPA)

wpa_supplicant is in DSL..

Thanks curaga, your statement that this Best Buy card will work with DSL out-of-the-box is good enough for me to make a $22 gamble.

I've noticed a few other threads on this Forum that touch on WPA, I'll give them a good read and hopefully get the card running on WPA. It's well known that WEP is easily cracked, and I can't imagine this distribution being soft on security.

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