[nycbug-talk] Searching for a "Plug and play" wireless network card

[mike at myownsoho.net]

My favorite move is to get a mini-pci to pci adapter and reuse cards from dead laptops.
I see the chip, most are BRCM or Atheros, then plug it all together. Cheap move IMO.

Mike--

Brian Callahan <bcallah at devio.us> wrote:

>On 2/2/2013 1:42 PM, George Rosamond wrote:
>*snip*
>>>
>>> I've found the Realtek stuff never changes the chipset on a product.
>A
>>> different chipset will have a different product name/number. Plus
>they
>>> tend to advertise the chipset openly and directly. Much different
>from
>>> some of the big-name vendors, indeed!
>>>
>>
>> The nice thing is that with the declining margins/cheaper production,
>a
>> la carte components aren't the monopoly of the big manufacturers that
>> you have to wait on them for "niceties" like documentation.
>> AFAIK/remember, it was the Taiwanese manufacturers who the OpenBSD
>> people had an easier time accessing, not the bcms of the world.
>>
>
>Yup. For this reason, I make sure to buy Realtek wireless stuff. As an 
>added benefit, urtw(4) doesn't require any firmware, so it's perfectly 
>usable in bsd.rd (in fact, I use wireless all the time to install new 
>snapshots to my yeeloongs).
>
>>> The manpages usually have a list of hardware known to work with each
>>> driver. Admittedly, it's sometimes non-exhaustive.
>>
>> Which
>>
>
>ath(4) comes to mind...
>
>>>
>>> Of course, if you have something you know has a good chipset and it
>>> comes up unidentified, write up a patch or let a dev know
>>> (me/okan/others? for OpenBSD, I'm sure there are devs for other BSDs
>>> lurking here) so we can write up a patch.
>>>
>>> I wonder if there's a way we can take the dmesgd entries, pull out
>the
>>> networking info, and keep that in its own separate database? Just a
>>> thought :)
>>
>> You mean dynamically?  Like queries across all the files based on
>> categories?  hmmm.. . . good idea. the problem is there a way to
>> indicate network stuff across all the dmesg types?
>>
>> OTOH, I'm sure we could just do a dump of the contents if you
>wanted...
>>
>
>I do mean dynamically. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the 
>"hoping the right chip is inside the plastic" camp as Jesse pointed
>out.
>
>Even a dump would be useful for people looking to buy wireless cards.
>
>~Brian
>
>> g
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> talk mailing list
>> talk at lists.nycbug.org
>> http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
>_______________________________________________
>talk mailing list
>talk at lists.nycbug.org
>http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.nycbug.org:8443/pipermail/talk/attachments/20130203/c41093b2/attachment.htm>