View Full Version : Atheros PCMCIA antennas & compatibility with Lucent Silv
ibholst
01-22-2004, 05:37 PM
Two quick questions:
1. Is there a vendor in the US that sells an Atheros 2.4 PCMCIA radio that has provisions for an external antenna? (Thinking of swaping out old TT 2MB 50 mW and 11MB 100mW cards.)
2. As a client, are they compatible with Lucent Silver 2.4 APs running in Star AP/routers at a max of 2Mbps or 5.5Mbps? Would they be compatible if the Silvers were set to 11Mbps with other clients connecting at 2 or 5.5?
Thanks,
I dunno about lucent silver compatibility, but star-os does NOT support PCMCIA atheros cards, only PCI and Mini-Pci atheros cards are supported.
lonnie
01-22-2004, 09:48 PM
Daniel is correct. For now we can only support the mini PCI cards. From testing of the mini PCI cards we are fairly pleased with the results and Orinoco cards. Forget using them with 2 mbps cards, though.
jwalshe
12-31-2005, 01:08 PM
The last post was in 2002. It is now just about 2006. Has there been any progress on including Atheros PCMCIA cards to the supported list? Any idea when it might happen? It seems to me to be a big omission considering that the atheros chipset is probably the best out there - it is certainly the one we have had most success with.
John
lonnie
12-31-2005, 02:46 PM
No it just won't happen. In fact v3 will drop support for PCMCIA entirely. It was never a reliable or high performaning technology, but it did get early support and provided capability we loved.
normanj
01-26-2006, 06:29 PM
You are missing out by not supporting pcmcia. There is just no way to get as many radios in a small footprint without it. I developed a PC104 product with up to 6 radios in one box and it worked great. Now I would like to expand the product to g protocol but now am faced with having to use an XP or a BSD OS to support this application.
Why do you prefer PCI when there is no RF difference, only form factor difference?
Norm
lonnie
01-26-2006, 09:17 PM
We have a unit with 4 mini PCI radios that measures 4" x 6" and about 1.5" thick. It draws 8W. Cardbus is being phased out. many laptops now do not even have cardbus slots. Everything is moving to mini PCI. Have you seen the new Atheros mini PCI? They are 1/3 the size of the standard mini PCI. By comparison the PCMCIA unit is huge. It is more costly. That is off the top of my head, but about covers it.