Are Netgear MA311 rev 2.0 Prism2-based?

[Pavel Roskin]

Hi, Denis!

On Sat, 22 May 2004, Denis Vlasenko wrote:

> My sister bought me two cards and is going to mail them to me.
> Since I am ~10000 km away from her, I'd like to check whether
> they are indeed Prism2. She writes:
>
> > Also, there is no information at all about the chipset, but you say that
> > all Netgear MA311 have Intersil. ?If it helps at all, the card has a
> > sticker that says "HW REV. 2.0".
>
> Can anybody confirm that this hardware works with hostap?

I cannot definitely confirm, but I quite sure it works with hostap.  Let
me show you how to find out.

2 out of 3 hardware compatibility lists from the recent thread list MA311
as compatible (Intersil chipset) without any warnings, one doesn't list it
at all.  If users had problems there would be warnings.

Listed:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/Prism2Card

Not listed:

http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/HardwareComparison

Using different chipsets without changing the model number is not common
practice.  D-Link did it and they were criticized by the community (not
just by Linux users).  Netgear has not been noticed doing that.  D-Link
has a prominent warning on the driver download pages for the "confusing"
devices.  Netgear has no such warning.

Both drivers (certified and non-certified) have "intersil" and "prism"
strings in them.  You can even find this in OEMSETUP.INF:

;   This installation script supports Windows NT for the
;   Intersil PRISM Wireless LAN Adapters.

Or look at this string from winxp/ma311n51.sys:
D:\SW\xi325\src\prismprj\DRIVER\NT51\X86\Release\WLANNDS.PDB

Finally, search of Google for "Netgear MA311 HW REV 2.0" (without quotes)
brings 3 hits, neither of which indicates any problems with the device.

Contrast this with a search for "D-Link DWL650 rev P" (311 hits).

Just because D-Link did something stupid we shouldn't suspect every other
company on the market.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin