A PCMCIA 802.11b (11Mbps) "Wi-Fi certified" wireless network card with 128 bit encryption.

• Compatibility: Does not work
• Interface: PCMCIA
• Case Proximity: n/a
• product website
• 3rd party driver

• Average user rating: 5
• Number of comments: 3
• submitted by user: cyan

cyan

Update: this card does not work in BeOS at all. It's not a setup issue, since a BreezeNET PC-DS.11b (Orinoco Gold / wavelan based) card works just fine in the same machine. It appears that the chipset is unsupported with R5+BONE.
Original comments follow:


I was not able to get this card to function in BeOS, tested with both R5+BONE7a and Dano. Version 3 of this card (as indicated on the front of the packaging and on the rear of the card next to the model number) is apparently based on the prism3 chipset. As I understand it, this does not work with R5+BONE nor Dano (plain net_server doesn't usually work with 802.11 for any card, from what I hear).
Version 2 of this card is apparently based on the prism2 chipset, so it might work. Then again, it probably won't =D

WARNING: There is a VERY strong possibility that I might be wrong. I may have failed to set the card up correctly, not having set an 802.11 card up before... an interesting thing I noticed was that when the prism drivers are selected, the "link" LED flashes at a fixed rate. It pauses briefly when networking is restarted. When trying to ping, nothing is displayed; it just sits there. When the wavelan driver is selected instead (which this card is NOT), the link light does not flash, and pinging fails (but it doesn't just sit there -- it actually times out each ping).
From this I conclude that it's either "sort-of" supported (but not well enough to actually use), or supported but set up incorrectly. I will be testing a known-supported 802.11b card soon to try and confirm or deny this.

In the mean time, everyone seems to mention the Orinoco Gold 802.11b card (NOT the Silver version!!!), so if you're looking for an 802.11b card, try that one.

WARNING 2: Don't install BONE on Personal Edition. The new kernel won't allow booting from a virtual partition -- only a real one it seems. You can install Personal Edition onto a real partition easily enough. Also, since it's a new kernel, you may encounter other troubles, perhaps rendering your system unbootable.

See driver URL for more info on installing 802.11 cards in BeOS -- go into the projects section, the Orinoco drivers, and look at the How-To. Note: I don't have anything to do with that site; it's just the How-To I used to try and get this card working. You'll also need BONE7a which you'll have to Google or BeShare for; I'm not going to give you a link to that =P

I've rated the card 2, since it "almost" works, but "almost" isn't good enough. The card itself appears to be solid enough; it's "just" a driver matter.

rating: 2

deej

Version 3 of this card is actually a Prism v3 chipset. BeOS only supports Prism v2 via Dano drivers. Do not purchase any cards that are Prism v3 or v2.5, they will not work.

I have a version 1 of this card and it works fine, however, if you move beyond the range of the wireless access point, it will lock up the card, only to be restored by a reboot (not a net restart either). So, stay within the rf range.

To find a version 1 of this card, look on the back of the card for the "CE" Consumer Electronics logo. The number immediately following that logo will be "0499". Insure of this before buying any Linksys WPC11 card, as some people will tell you it's a version 1 because they didn't label later versions until 2.5 or 3. If it does not have this number, it will not work.

I'm changing the rating of this to 5 - make sure you get the right version of the WPC11 card - ie, NOT version 3, and it will work if you stay within the range of the access point.

Deej

rating: 5

zoontf

I have a WPC11 card I bought in order to try and use with the hfa384x driver on Bebits. It works just fine under R5 pro without BONE. I do not know what version it is. Because this driver works for me, I am going to rate the card a 7.

rating: 7