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Whither MaxTech's Wireless Drivers?

Posted by timothy on from the no-wires-no-drivers-nothin' dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "My local ISP has put in a wireless network. It's great -- Except there's a $150 difference between the internal wireless card and the external box/hub. I'm in the process of installing Linux on a lot of the local computers and would rather find drivers for these cards than change the wireless equipment out... thus charging them a higher rate :( The cards they are using are the Maxtech XWL420 ISA cards and I've found references to the drivers, yet the links no longer work. Does anyone have any idea where I can find drivers for these cards? Anyone have any ideas for possible other cards that have Linux drivers that are being maintained? Please -- any help would be fantastic and would please a lot of folks in this town."

3 of 5 comments (clear)

  1. Zcomax cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    We've been using the Zcomax XI-300 which is an 802.11b compliant card. It's a pcmcia card that runs about $130 but you'll also need a $50 pcmcia-isa adapter, and a $40-50 pigtail. On top of that, you need to run low-loss coax all the way to you computer which will decrease your tx/rx singal levels. We have about 100 wireless customers setup so far. Believe me, it's simpler to just spring for the external box. It's not worth the $100 savings especially if you try to use the service with more than one computer.

    The drivers for the XI-300 are released under the MPL and can be found at http://www.linux-wlan.org/

  2. Working 802.11b/Linux setup by ikekrull · · Score: 3

    If your ISP is 802.11b, you should be able to use cards from any vendor to connect to their network.

    I have just set up a Nokia C111 card (through a PCI-PCMCIA adapter, also supplied by Nokia) on my Linux machine.

    It works great, and Nokia supplies (mixed binary/source) Linux drivers for it, which you need to compile yourself into a kernel module.

    I wasn't able to get it running on one of my machines running a 2.2.14 kernel, but the other machine, with a 2.4.5 kernel worked perfectly. I am going to upgrade the 2.2.14 machine to a more modern 2.2 series kernel, so we shall see if it works then.

    The card and adapter cost NZ$300 and $160 respectively - halve those to get $US.

    --
    I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
  3. Just use an 802.11 compliant product with Drivers by sportal · · Score: 2
    The XWL-420, is just a 802.11 DSSS compliant product. Find a cheap 802.11 product that already has Linux drivers and use that instead.

    A complete list: Wireless LAN resources for Linux