I really did not know much about wifi cards until recently and I still have some research to do before I feel I have a firm practical grip on the subject. I see a lot of posts expressing frustration trying to get a card that works and getting cards to work that supposedly work on user's handhelds. Being an autodicdact, I have a system of attack I employ on any subject I tackle.
I think I have some hints that will help a lot of non-experts get ON with getting connected.
Before you buy a card, new or used, find out the
(radio
) chipset. This is a task easier said than done. Most card makers intentionally make it hard to impossible to find out the chipset. Manufacturers, all of them, constantly change chipsets and do not indicate what chipset is in a batch of new cards. Even within models and within a model year, chipsets often differ. So, because a particular model had the famous Prism chipset a few months ago or even a month ago that does not mean that model still contains Prism or the specific one you get will contain Prism
(or Orinoco
)
Do not expect to get help with what chipset is inside a particular model and make from the manufacturer. No, things are not so chaotic at the plants that no one knows. This is a refusal to support consumers and we need to write letters of complaint about this to our elected representatives and to the FCC. Yes, the FCC. I will explain why shortly.
Fast Run Down on the Prism Chipset
First, major techs in the industry side of things advise people to try to buy a Lucent/Agere/Avaya/Proxim Orinoco Silver or Orinoco Gold. Note: The Orinoco_cs driver does not support monitor mode. Passive monitoring tools like Kismet require monitor mode capability. Supposedly there are patches for orinoco_cs that allow monitoring. If you wish to not use a patch, the word is go with a Prism or Atheros-based card.
Chipsets
Many vendors sell wi-fi hardware but radio chipsets come from a small set of manufacturers. An excellent resource is Hewlet Packard tech Jean Tourrilhes website. He runs a comprehensive site that includes his famous "Wireless LAN How-to" You find his page at [hpl.hp.com/personal/jean_tourrilhes/Linux] Once there click on main page to get the basic index. Tourilhes may be the leading expert on wifi cards.
You may be able to identify the chipset that is in your card from the information Tourilhes has gathered. If push comes to shove, you might want to try to get data on your card from the FCC site, using the FCC ID number on the card. [fcc.gov/oet/fccid]. I could not get the chipset there for a sandisk connect plus 128MB card but sandisk apparantly is one of the firms that is not exactly in compliance with FCC regulations.
All you need do is enter the FCC ID as instructed. Leave the other stuff blank. Click on "Operational Data" from the information you get. You click on the door mailbox looking icon in line with the pdf document you want.
There are in total 50 chipset makers. The five most popular make and sell 80% or more of all wifi cards: Compaq, Nokia, Proxim, D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, SMC and Senao/Engenius. All of them use other makers chipsets as well as their own. Something unethical occurs in this industry. Many models and units remain labelled with the same name and part number eventhough the chipset is changed and can change throughout the year
(s
). An example one expert uses is the D-Link DWL-650
Initially the DWL-650 came with the famous Prism II chipset but version 2 has a very different ADMtek chipset.
Industry insiders say, buyers have a good chance of finding an 802.11b card that is supposed to have a Prism II chipset but you cannot count on any specific card actually containing Prism II !!
A firm named Harris created the Prism I standard for 802.11. It is 802.11 only. The famous prism is the Prism II. At one time, it was the most used and most popular 802.11b chipset. Intersil licensed the chipset AND name to many vendors, Several of them eventually based their own product on Prism design. These firms include: Lucent, Symbol, and Aironet & Cisco but their "Prism"s employed different hardware and ARE NOT COMPATIBLE with the real Prism II drivers.
SOME CARDS APPEAR TO WORK BUT THE DRIVER WILL NOT LOAD. The card may APPEAR TO FUNCTION PARTLY OR LIGHTS UP AND DOESN'T WORK AT ALL.
Similar stories abound for Orinoco chipsets. Originally WaveLan brand, the company is now Orinoco of Lucent. Lucent then spun off Orinoco into a separate firm named Agere which sells Prism and Orinoco chipset cards. Lucent spun off still another firm named Avaya which sells Orinoco chipset cards. Product sales of Orinoco was then acquired by Proxim. Agere still makes the chipsets. So, Lucent, Agere, & Avaya brands use the Orinoco chipset. Other brands that use Orinoco: Enterasya, Els, Beffalo, HP, IBM, Dell, Sony, and Compaq. All of them also use other chipsets!
In sumary, you cannot go by a user saying he bought so and so card and used such and such driver and it works in his Handheld just fine! This does not mean you can buy the same card and have the same results.
I would not fall for sellers telling you a particular card will work. Many salesmen will tell you anything. I would not fall for a promise you can return the card, unless you buy it from a respectable physical local store like Circuit City. Returning anything to an online store, off an eBay vendor, mail order period, means you paid shipping and handling. You will pay return postage and most likely a restocking fee and suddenly no one knows of any tech or salesman named Bill or "Bill should not have told you that"
I am not going to waste any more money myself. I have a nice new $129 list Sandisk connect plus 128MB card I got for $26.00 and now I know why and I know why Eagle Computer site and an Eagle tech falsely confirmed the card works with Casio BE300 & E-200, Linux and all CE devices. I get the card and Sandisk makes clear on the package that it is a PPC 2002, 2003 and above and Windows 98 ---- card. Fortunately, I can use the card on my Linux run Compaq Notebook.
I have completely checked out the Ambicom 802.11b low power PDA card Tigerdirect is selling for $59.00. Ambicom states in writing that the card is Prism II chipset and the CD includes all the drivers.
The LAN techs I spoke with agree with me that the chipset confusion is probably intentional. As usual, its about money. The end product makers buy what chipsets they can get cheapest at the time and the classic Prism II chipset is not the cheap route.
By the way a free program written for Linux, by Tourrilhes called "Wireless Tools" will tell what chipset is in a card but you must have a Linux system to use it. The program is standard issue with the newer releases of the major Linux distros.
I discovered my new Sandisk card has a Z-Com chipset. Sandisk support, by the way, dealt with my query about the chipset by not replying at all. I didn't know Z-COM had a chipset. I can hack Linux to drive it but not my NEC 780 or 790, Jornada or BE-300. Incidently, I discovered the chipset by looking over the internal photos sandisk had to submit to the FCC.
I also discovered from the FCC site that my Netgear 802.11g USB adapter uses a Z-Com chipset. I got lucky. My particular Netgear USB has Prism II. Now, I know why my USB adapter works to easily and so well but I read posts everywhere expressing hate for Netgear USB adapter. They got the off the wall Z-Com.
Again, before buying a card, I would look over Jean Tourrilhes site.
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/#howto
---Bruised
good to know. 
It was the ONLY Palm device to ever have a CompactFlash slot AFAIK. Sony made a CF WiFi card for it, but no one else has bothered to make a Palm driver for other CF WiFi cards. And I believe that was the first ever Palm device that had WiFi too. Still a lot newer than most HPCs tho. 
sorry 
