[clue-tech] going wireless

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Monday 08 December 2008 02:38:30 pm Peter Kuykendall wrote:
> I'm running Ubuntu on a year-old Dell laptop.  It's built-in Broadcom
> wireless adapter worked after following some simple instructions from the
> web.  In that case it required running a program which performs "firmware
> cutting", meaning it extracts the proprietary Broadcom firmware from the
> device and uses it.  It's a workaround to having to ship Broadcom's
> proprietary code with the distribution.

I did bump into a bunch of links that were talking about how to get ubuntu 
working,  but I really wasn't looking forward to switching distros.  :-)

> For general use on other PCs I have an Airlink 101 cardbus 802.11b adapter.

Cardbus being one of those internal slots I need to look at see if I have one 
of,  I guess.

> Linux supports it natively, i.e. without NDIS wrapper and without any
> proprietary code.

That part sounds good.

> The catch is that I bought the thing at Fry's, which is a chain in
> California but not in Colorado.

And not in PA,  which is where I am,  though I've heard they're in some areas 
of the southeast,  like Atlanta.  A bit far to go though.  :-)

> Presumably it's available via mail order.  It's cheap too; I spent $25 on it
> as I recall, about a year ago.

Cheap is good!

> It always comes up fine, no matter which live distro CD I'm using on every
> random laptop that I've tried it on.
>
> - Pete

Cool.

What software does linux use to deal with the card in particular and with 
wireless in general?

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net>
> To: "CLUE tech" <clue-tech at cluedenver.org>
> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 11:21 AM
> Subject: [clue-tech] going wireless
>
> >I recently acquired this Sony laptop that isn't "new" enough to come with
> >any
> > sort of wireless built into it.  I've shrunk the installed XP down to 3G
> > or
> > so and have been running Slackware on the rest of it for a while now.
> >
> > I'm looking to get some idea of what I need to do to get wireless going
> > with
> > this machine.  There's some work that I'm looking at that seems to
> > require it.  I don't even know if I want a pcmcia card or something
> > that'd plug into
> > a USB connector,  or if I have an open slot inside somewhere.
> >
> > A bit of reading on the subject tells me that there are issues with what
> > appears to be the same adapter using different chipsets from time to
> > time. Other than that,  I've not really much of a clue as to what I need
> > to do here.
> >
> > Recommendations for both hardware and software would be appreciated.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
> > ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
> > be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
> > -
> > Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by
> > lies. --James
> > M Dakin
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-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin