Rebadged Senoa pcmcia cards with prism 3 chipset

[Ged Haywood]

Hi there,

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 Dermot McGahon wrote:

> We bought the wrong cards :(

:(

> The MERCURY means that they are based on the PRISM 3 chipset, which
> StarOS does not have any support for. I saw a brief mention on a
> Seattle Wireless website that support for these may be underway. Is
> this so?

I don't know understand, StarOS appears to be based on Linux, and
Prism 3 is supported by HostAP

http://hostap.epitest.fi/

so I should have thought it possible to use Prism3 with StarOS, but I
know nothing about StarOS.  If not then there's Linux, if you have or
can find the skills to put the system together.  The skills are easy
to find I think, but time-consuming to learn.  I don't know what StarOS
might offer you that a Linux distribution wouldn't, out of the box.

> Can anyone also confirm that these are 100mW cards and are basically
> not as good as the PRISM 2.5 based cards?

I can't comment on that, I don't know the cards you have and I don't
know how you'd compare them to decide which was better than which.

> The vendor we were using Solwise.co.uk are reporting poor
> availability for the 2.5 cards and that the wholesale prices from
> Intelsil have doubled since the PRISM 3 based cards have become
> available.

After my experiences with that company, I would treat what Solwise
tell me with great caution.  However it is true that the availability
of Prism cards has been patchy.  We have a few of the Prism-based
MA311 PCI cards in stock which we could supply.  We keep them as a
hedge against times of bad supply, because we use them ourselves and
are very happy with them.  We are based in England.  Having said that,
I don't think you need new cards, probably just the right software.

73,
Ged.