prism cards

[James B. Hiller]

>   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.

If it matters - I have had luck over the last two months in getting
two DWL-520 cards, one Rev A1 and one Rev B1, from
www.networkingoutlet.com.  Believe they can get more of these
if you push.

>   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.

See above on the 520.  The way I ensured my purchase would yield the
correct device, as I have with other devices of particular hardware
I wanted, was to get with the tech support folks at the vendor and
get them to put hands on the one I would be sent, and check it out.
Never have gotten any resistance when I ask for that (other than
the occasional "does it really matter to you?").

>   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!!).

Note also that the Netgear MA 311, a PCI Prism card, is readily available
at a number of places, including Circuit City and BestBuy.

I agree that finding the cards in the configuration you want can be
something of a challenge, but I'd say they're far from scarce.  With
the number of variants shown on the Absolute Value Systems page,
there a quite a few to try finding before throwing in the towel.

jbh

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