[Cu-wireless] Quick NETGEAR MA301 802.11b Wireless PCI Adapter Question

[Clint Popetz]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 12:28:35PM -0600, Peter Folk wrote:
> Read carefully:
> 
> Requires MA401 802.11b Wireless PC Card (sold separately)
> 
> $37 is still not bad for a desktop->PCMCIA adapter, but if you're
> not running Windows you need to be very careful: most of them do
> not play well with Linux or BSD or BeOS.
>  
> Pete

Ahh, my bad.  This is how most wireless cards work.  They are all
pcmcia or cardbus, and they need a pci or isa to pcmcia/cardbus bridge
to be used in your desktop machine, since it probably doesn't have an
existing pcmcia slot.

Before I had an actual wireless base station I used to use a linux box
as my base station.  So I ran into this question, and instead of
paying $50 on a PCI adaptor specific to one wireless card, I dropped
$120 to get a general purpose dual-slot pcmcia reader for my linux
box.  Then I could use any of my notebook's cards (ethernet, wireless,
scsi, etc) in my desktop.  It turned out to be very handy.

Just FYI.

				-Clint