prism cards

[Greg Johnson]

Hello Vicente,

  I have also had a terrible time obtaining prism-based wireless cards.
The best I could come up with was to troll ebay.com looking for them.

  I use D-Link DWL-520 cards, which work great.  But, the Prism-based
versions are no longer available.  Note:  the DWL-520+ are NOT Prism-based
and will not work with hostap as far as I know.  Also, there are something
like three variants of the DWL-520 card, and the last one is not Prism-based
either.  The only way to tell on ebay is to closely examine the picture of
the card.

  Here is a URL for a Prism-based DWL-520 on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3041951026&category=45001

  Here is a URL for a non-Prism-based DWL-520 on ebay that will not work
with hostap:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3041508175&category=20321

  (I know from experience:  I am now the proud owner of one of the latter :-(.)

  If the picture of the card has a large blue and white component on it, then
it is a Prism-based hostap-compatible card.  If the picture has only small
black components, then it is not Prism-based and is not hostap-compatible.

  It seems to me that the disappearance of Prism-based cards represents a
threat to the whole hostap project.  The hostap project is one of the most
wonderful things I've found on the net for a while (THANKS JOUNI especially
and all contributors!!).

  What (if anything) can be done to encourage the continued viability of this
great project by protecting the availability of the hardware required for it?

Thanks,

Greg Johnson

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