Recently in Orinoco WaveLAN PCMCIA wireless adapter Category

I always pull the trigger too soon when declaring success with a new WiFi adapter/software/hardware combination, and I'm hoping that's not the case with the Airlink 101 AWLL3028, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and my aging Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101.

But today I first had trouble connecting with my WEP encryption key (I know I shouldn't be using WEP ... and I will change to WPA2 once I resolve a few issues and get the rest of the house's computers on board ...).

Then when I finally did connect (had to reboot) I had the typical screen-freezes-and-ctrl-alt-backspace-AND-ctrl-alt-delete-have-no-effect-so-I-have-to-do-a-hard-reset.

That's the beauty of blogging where absolutely no one is making any damn money from the entire enterprise: I can just spin out a fake word with 30 or so hyphens and just move on.

OK ... I was reprimanded once for using the kind of language that flows continuously through my favorite podcast, and I considered just chucking the whole blogging-for-the-man thing and doing this on my own time, on my own site and enjoying the tens of dollars yearly I could earn from Google AdSense.

OK, I pretty much do this entirely on my own time as is ...

Anyhow, I'm ready to return to the raw meat of this blog post, which is my trouble with wireless networking.

So I did the hard reset, booted back into Ubuntu and while things seem a bit slow, networking-wise (that could be anything), it's working OK for the moment.

Here's what I'm thinking:

The problem might not be the specific wireless networking adapter; it could be an issue with USB (1.1 in the case of this old hunk of saved-from-the-garbage hardware). Whether Linux-related or not, perhaps the Toshiba just can't handle using the USB inteface that intensely.

I don't recall having any problems with the PCMCIA adapter I use with every damn PCMCIA-equipped computer known to woman and man, namely the Orinoco WaveLAN Silver (all I'm saying is if you don't have one of these, go to eBay and get one; for me's it's the geek-networking equivalent of the Swiss Army knife or Leatherman.

So a "newer" Cardbus adapter (maybe another $10 Airlink?) might work better for this particular laptop.

Another thing: If whatever problem I'm having is related to software, it's possible that performance will improve and crashes will diminish (or end entirely) with newer versions of everything from the Linux kernel (remember, I'm using Ubuntu 8.04, which is pretty much a year and a half old; ancient in Linux terms) to the dreaded NetworkManager in GNOME or anything else in the stack.

But given my recent experience, I'm extremely gunshy and more worried about regressions than either a lack or abundance of "improvements." That's what screwing up Xorg for probably half the PCs out there will do to you, O Xorg developers who decided that working Intel video is for other people, meaning people who don't have Intel video chips embedded in their PCs.

Can you tell I'm bitter? I thought you could.

Of course with the super-fast USB 3 on the horizon for Linux — yep, first for Linux and then for the other 99 percent of the world, I expect we'll be getting more USB-connected hardware and not less, and that includes add-on network adapters, which I suspect will be with us in various forms for quite awhile as PCs' built-in networking (wired and wireless) are superseded by newer devices and protocols.

I'll continue testing the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 USB adapter and even consider entering the modern era and slapping Ubuntu 9.10 on this laptop. I'll try an in-place upgrade from 8.04-8.10-9.04-9.10, and if that doesn't work I can do a reintall with a fresh 9.10. That'll keep me (and my office's ample bandwidth) busy for awhile, I suspect.

I'm always hopeful; "It's only one crash," I say to myself. But one crash usually begets many more. I say usually hoping for the unusual and simultaneously wondering to myself why things have to be this hard (and remembering that these kind of problems reared themselves very well during my time running Windows 98/2000/XP and Mac OS 7.6/9.x/10.x).

Right now with the built-in wired networking, this hardware/software setup is pretty much problem-free (OK ... suspend/resume is a disaster, but I wasn't expecting anything more with hardware of this now-7-year-old vintage).

It's a good time to put my optimism hat atop my head, leave the friendly confines of the Ubuntu LTS behind and leap into the world of the six-month upgrade cycle and hope that improvements drown out regressions.

After all, I can always initiate my own regression and return to 8.04 (or chuck it all for something safe like Slackware 12.2 ...). I called Slackware "safe." Time for more coffee.

If you've been using operating systems that are not Windows (but come to think of it, I've had plenty of networking problems in Windows as well), you know that getting both wired and WiFi network adapters to work in Linux, the BSDs and even Mac OS X is a crapshoot at best and prelude to weeks of often-futile hackery at worst.

The smart thing to do is figure out what works the easiest and best BEFORE you buy anything to add to your computers, especially when it comes to WiFi adapters.

The problem is that manufacturers very often won't even roll out a binary driver for Linux, and never for BSD. The number of hardware makers who provide an open-source driver is even fewer.

That leaves users either that closed-source binary driver (Linux is full of 'em; OpenBSD refuses to include them) or waiting for developers from the community to either write a driver from scratch or adapt one from another open-source project. Contrary to what you might think, developers across the BSDs share a whole lot of code, and the creation of a driver in, say, NetBSD, means that developers from the other projects will be keen to look at that code and adapt it for their flavor of OS.

It also means that older network interfaces tend to be better supported than newer ones. My Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card for 802.11b is famous for working with EVERYTHING. I haven't found a computer that has a PCMCIA slot that it won't work with. I camped out on eBay for weeks trying to get one and was finally successful. It works with my 1996-era Powerbook 1400 running System 7, my 1999-era Mac G4 running Debian Etch (but you can't close the case; and YES, Apple designed a desktop computer that uses an internal PCMCIA card, with only Apple's original Airport card [muy expensivo on eBay and 802.11b only] fitting, or so it seems), my 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt and all my laptops from the first decade of the 2000s: the Gateway Solo 1450 and the two Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 models.

But I'm not hear to sing the praises of the Orinoco WaveLAN.

No, I'm here to report that good things come to those FOSS users who wait.

A couple of years ago, I spent a big $9.95 at Fry's on the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 USB WiFi adapter. Since the AWLL3026 was known for working in Ubuntu Linux out of the box, I figured, "What could be different between 3026 and 3028?"

A lot. They used totally different chipsets, and while the 3026 worked like a charm, the AWLL 3028 didn't work at all in Linux or the BSDs.

Sure there were lengthy forum threads about how to use ndiswrapper to make a Windows driver for the AWLL3028 work in Linux. But I could never make it work. And after a half-dozen unsuccessful attempts, I swore off of ndiswrapper for good.

When I read about the CNet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter working out of the box in both Linux and OpenBSD, I quickly bought one from Amazon.com for about $23.

It did work — and especially well in OpenBSD 4.4, which I'm no longer running. It also worked automatically in Ubuntu 8.04, which I am running at present.

But I've been getting mysterious crashes after about two to three hours of use, and only when the Cnet adapter is connected.

I remember somebody either e-mailing me or leaving a comment on one of my posts (or was it a forum thread?) to the effect that the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 did indeed work in Ubuntu 8.04 — and automatically, with no ndiswrapper needed.

After that I made a mental note, "Try the Airlink adapter already."

Well, I finally did. I plugged it into the Toshiba laptop and booted into Ubuntu 8.04.

I saw the light; the blue light that means the Airlink 101 AWLL is active (I used to get NOTHING with it connected and Linux running).

It works! I have WiFi flowing into this circa-2002 laptop from my Netgear router.

And I have the prospect of the laptop running for hours and not dying due to a WiFi adapter being connected.

And ... the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 WiFi adapter appears to still be available at $15 or less. I haven't yet researched whether or not the chipset (mine is Realtek 8187b) is the same.

Curiously, the adapter doesn't show up when I run lspci or dmesg, but it does work — and with no intervention on my part (that means automatically. I'm not as "good" with networking in Linux as I am in OpenBSD, mostly because OpenBSD's documentation is so good and networking is a major focus of the project; the man pages actually tell you how to set up a network adapter with the given chipset, and those same man pages go way beyond the usual "here's the command and a bunch of switches, good luck to you ..." I digress; if I could manage to upgrade OpenBSD without causing the install to blow up in my face, I'd probably still be running it.

Back to the topic at hand, the Airlink 101 AWLL3028.

In short, if the chipset stayed the same, at $10 to $15, the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 is an inexpensive way to add wireless networking to a computer running Linux (and more specifically the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS distribution).

I had no expectation that it would work, but I decided to shove my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA 802.11b wireless networking card into the meant-for-Airport-only slot in my Power Macintosh G4/466 running Debian Etch.

I had never heard that this sort of thing would work.

I shoved the card it. It's quite a bit longer than the pricey Airport card, which I've seen go for near $100 on eBay.

The Mac's antenna plug matched. I connected the antenna wire.

I booted Debian. I opened the Desktop -- Administration -- Networking tool.

There it was, eth2, my wireless card.

I configured it for DHCP. It found a network. I now had wireless networking on a Power Macintosh G4 under Debian without having to buy a thing.

One problem: Since the Orinoco WaveLAN Silver card is quite a bit longer than the Airport card this slot was meant for, there's no way I can even close the case of the G4 while using the Wi-Fi card.

That's a bit of a dilemma, no?

Maybe a PCI card will work better? I wonder what might work ... and if I'll have to upgrade to Lenny to increase my chances of this actually working.

But wireless in Linux on a G4. Amazing.