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cyan
Finally! It works! (I've had terrible un-success with the Linksys WPC11)
Since this card is based on the original wavelan chipset, which is known to be compatible with R5+BONE (hence the "3rd party driver" status listed above), there was very little trouble getting this card to work in BeOS. Prism (1) and wavelan-based wireless network cards work in BeOS, but only with the legally-iffy BONE installed (google or beshare for BONE7a.ZIP).
After installing BONE (warning: only install BONE onto a partition-installed copy of BeOS; it renders your system unbootable if you install it onto Personal Edition without first installing onto a partition) and following through the wireless how-to (see the driver URL; I'm not affiliated with this site), it worked.
Transfers are fast enough and the link seems reliable so far. There is no "client manager" software, so you have to guess the signal strength, and it always connects to the strongest network it can find (autodetecting channel, SSID, etc). The drivers also don't support WEP, and you need "broadcast SSID" turned on in the access point's settings. This makes your network insecure, so don't transmit sensitive information, and you'll need to set up MAC address filtering on your access point, to stop annoying rodents...uhm, I mean other people (intruders) from connecting to your network and stealing your net connection, etc. However, one advantage with this approach is that it should be easy to connect to public access points.
Most of these issues are common to all wireless network cards in BeOS, but apparently the prism-based cards let you specify an SSID. This might mean that you can't connect to public access points any more, but the plus side is that you can probably secure your network by turning off "broadcast SSID". I've not used a prism-based card which was compatible, so I'll shut my muzzle now. You'll probably have a harder time finding a Prism 1 card now that 2 and 3 -based cards are more common. The safest bet are the wavelan-based cards (Orinoco / BreezeNET, Dell TrueMobile, etc...)
In conclusion, I'm happy with the card. I'm not transmitting anything super-sensitive unencrypted so I'm not worried about the lack of WEP (encryption) in BeOS (which affects all types of wireless cards equally anyway), and my access point filters MAC addresses, so I'm not too worried about intruders stealing the connection.
Recommended! rating: 9 |
