Hi
I am trying to get a permanent wireless solution for my R31. I have a variety of devices that work under Ubuntu but some have issues.
USB Zydas stick - it works fine, but is taking up my only free USB port (as I broke the other). Edimax PCMCIA card - hangs the machine when on battery. Buffalo PCMCIA card - works great, but is my sons. Intel Mini PCI card - hangs the machine after a few mins.
So far - apart from the USB stick - the Buffalo card which is Broadcom 4306 based card has been the most reliable. Whilst scouting around on eBay I found a Broadcom based Mini PCI card which uses the same chipset.
Are the problems I have with my other internal card - the Intel 2200BG - related to my particular card, those Intel cards or Mini PCI cards in general?
Would a different card suffer from the same problems? I know you cant really answer it, but does anyone have any experience or problems with other internal wireless cards. It is only a few pounds so I wont lose too much if it doesnt work when it gets here.
Simon
Are the problems I have with my other internal card - the Intel 2200BG
- related to my particular card, those Intel cards or Mini PCI cards
in general?
Your problems shouldn't be specific to all miniPCI cards, but there are a couple of potential gotchas
One is that IBM cleverly locked down the bios on some Thinkpads to only work with specific card VendorID's. Official reasoning was that they could only promise FCC compliance with tested cards, Unofficial reasoning was that Wifi was an expensive option on some Thinkpads and the cards wholesale to enable it were 15 quid.
There are bios patches to disable it or extend the list of supported VendorID's, the R31 may not be affected but google first as I know for instance the R40 was.
Another one is that some miniPCI cards are hybrids which contain say Wireless and the Modem or Wireless and Ethernet. I don't think the R31 is affected but check the card only has antenna connections going to it and not a separate multipin connector.
Finally there were two standards for managing card power status (for Wireless power off switches) in hardware. One is rare and I have only seen in really nasty stuff, there is a workaround which requires removing a track to the miniPCI edge connector. I haven't seen this issue since a horrible Medion laptop in the early days of integrated Wifi so I doubt that will be a problem here.
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Simon Royal -
Wayne Stallwood