[Cu-wireless] Hardware update

[Peter Folk]

First of all, all the cheapish access-points out there with dual
antennae use "antenna diversity" to get a better signal; they do
not have two fully-functional RF modems.  That said, at $140 retail
the Linksys WAP11 is only $40 more than the card+adapter.

I was looking at ISA-backplane SBCs yesterday.  It appears you
can get a reasonable ISA SBC for $240 (and this is about the best
you can do even if you buy in bulk).  That, a cheap passive back-
plane, and a couple ISA->PCMCIA adapters would work nicely.  To
get cheaper than WAP11s tho, you'd need six cards in a box.

And alas!  Now arises on the rosy fingers of dawn a monster, evil
and borne of bad design: you can only have two WaveLan cards on
one machine.  Using multiple brands of cards, I would suspect you
can up that to four but no more
<http://wearables.blu.org/wear-hard-01/20011637.html>
unless we find some genuine PCI adapters (not just PCI/ISA->PCMCIA
bridges).

So to do better than WAP11s, the PC has to cost less than $160.
Such a PC will perform better than multi-WAP11s and be more flex-
ible, except we won't be able to do ethernet bridging.


Pete

(News flash! there's a new WaveLan driver in town:
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Orinoco.html>)