PCMCIA wireless card

[jflan]

Can anyone recommend a PCMCIA 16 bit wireless card that would be easy to configure in Puppy ?

Thanks

[Tortanick]

Why not ask the puppy linux forum?

[jflan]

I have and I'm asking here also, because of the savvy Puppy users that visit.
So far, I hear that Orinoco or Prism2 chipped cards will work.
Have not dialed into a specific mfr. as of yet.
Just wondering if there is a stand-out in the group ?

[qldit]

Good Morning jflan, actually with the newer version of Puppy, (2.14) I haven't actually heard of anyone having problems with common PCMCIA cards.
You could probably check it out at point of purchase.
How much are those cards now, they sure have come down in price!

By the way Puppy Linux Ver 2.15 is not far off release either.

Cheers, Lawrence

[jflan]

Thanks, Lawrence.
Since I posted this I have found a couple of very interesting lists that some kind folks have put together for those shopping wireless cards.

Indeed, the Orinoco and Prism based cards are Linux-friendly and there are many others.
The stand-out for the old 16-bit slots seems to be the Orinoco Gold sold under various labels, even Dell.
It is sought after because of its power and ability to connect to an external antenna.
Tha kids love 'em for war-driving. They put the external on the roof of the vehicle !

Here are the lists :
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php?hostif=PCMCIA
http://seattlewireless.net/HardwareComparison

I'll keep a lookout for 2.15

[jflan]

My Orinoco "Silver" PCMCIA card arrived today and the old lappy, Puppy 2.14 and SeaMonkey are connected !

The setup was amazingly easy. Puppy saw the card and auto-loaded the correct driver.
What a pleasant experience !

I'm typing this on the old lappy while it entertains me with an audio CD.
Easy sound configuration with Alsa. Those drivers were also onboard Puppy 2.14

[qldit]

Good Afternoon jflan, I must congratulate you on your logical progression and research to produce a positive outcome!
You certainly deserve a win!
Well done!

The programs included with Puppy are an excellent choice.

When you open Gxine, just using it's "File" menubar dropdown gives immedate access to standard music CDs simply by selecting CD. Movies play by selecting the DVD item. (No drives need to be mounted to do this)

The streaming audio also operates very well simply by using the "Media" dropdown.

I am very impressed at this system's ease of operation and simplicity to achieve targets.

Ensure you use the firewall setup wizard in the wizard-wizard, following the defaults is simplest.

I am sure you will be as impressed with this system as I am.

By the way if you get a situation of power loss the GUI window will not reappear, it only boots to the command line. To recover the GUI it usually has "xorg wizard" instructions showing or simply typing "xwin" twice recovers it.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

Thanks for the kind words and advice, Lawrence !

I think my success was simply taking advantage of available resources and the inherent competence of Puppy.
Had command-line compilation been required, I would likely be singing a different tune.

[qldit]

Good Morning jflan, thankyou for the info given, BTW, the actual Puppy Ver 2.15 was released as a testing product in a CE version a week or so ago. (Community Effort, it includes Open Office elements and other programs, but is significantly larger than normal Puppy Versions.)

Personally I don't find much that the word-processor Abiword can't do, for normal kinds of writing and it's save abilities including PDF and Doc can be very useful, of course the Open Office WP has similar capacity but is arranged differently.

Barry and his team are playing with a few problems in the Puppy file structure areas apparently with a view to possibly moving to Ext3FS but at this point Ver 2.15 remains a work under construction.
I D/L the 2.15 CE testing version but can't see much reason to shout about it over the normal 2.14 system.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[jflan]

Hello Lawrence,

I have a question about my wireless.
It uses etho and not atho, as I would have expected.
atho is not present.
Why is that ?

Thanks,
JF

[qldit]

Hello Lawrence,

I have a question about my wireless.
It uses etho and not atho, as I would have expected.
atho is not present.
Why is that ?

Thanks,
JF

Good Morning jflan, I have no idea, but at a guess would imagine it has something to do with the PCMCIA interface and architecture of the motherboard.

Using Puppy Ver 2.14 my desktop machines here all show Ath0, but I am using "Netgear" Wireless Cards.
I have a dsl modem/router directly connected to an ethenet card and it shows Eth0.

I have seen these wireless cards detected as ethernet items in previous odd Linux systems.

It is interesting to try to watch the readout during boot, you will note a timeout as the wireless system is detected and accessed.

I really don't know whether that is a plus to have the internet accessable as the machine actually boots, although there is no program open.
The later laptops appear to have a wireless enable button on a lot of them.
I have no idea how this works either.

My thoughts are along the lines of a laptop being used in an aircraft that the wireless may be live and cause some unintended interaction.

If I learn anything new about this aspect I will advise.

Cheers, Lawrence.