[plug] PC Card w/ Atheros chipset

[W.Kenworthy]

I had one of these cards and was glad to put it back in the box when the
laptop I used it in died.  I suspect the problem is less the card than
the madwifi drivers as the performance varied depending on version.  And
yes, I did get the rate variations over time - however I am suspicious
that the drivers were reporting it correctly.  I only used it sporadicly
so I never did spend a lot of time on it.

I am currently using an ipw2200 based builtin and its performance to the
same access points is far far superior to what the netgear card ever
did.  (home dlink wireless router and various cisco units, plus running
kismet)

Suggestion - try some large (multi-gbyte) file transfers and see how the
throughput and rates stack up.

Billk

On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 17:10 +0800, Richard Meyer wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have a few questions to ask concerning the Netgear WG511T card I
> bought off eBay - I'm using it in an IBM X30 lappy, and it works fine
> for a while, and then the reported signal gets weaker and weaker, with
> the transfer rate eventually dropping to 1Mb/s. Reported signal strength
> and quality also drop.
> 
> The other lappy I have here which has an Intel "Centrino" card is happy
> to remain at 54Mb/s.
> 
> This is, of course, under Linux (OpenSUSE 10.2). The question I'm asking
> is whether anyone can think of a reason for the degradation (the AP is
> within 2 metres of the lappy).
> 
> I suspect that the card may be suffering from hardware rot, with a a
> connection acting up as the card gets warmer (and it gets quite toasty
> after about 3 hours).
> 
> Also does anyone have another card of another make (also preferably
> Atheros chipset) that I could borrow for a day or so to check whether it
> is a hardware problem?
> 
> Any ideas gratefully received.