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The AirStation LAN card comes in one flavor - PCMCIA (PC Card)
-, uses the Agere Systems chip set, and has a fixed position,
non-removable antenna. The antenna has a "hump"
that would interfere with a card next to it, so you'll probably
need to put it into the top PCMCIA slot of your laptop.
The card has two LEDs which indicate card power and wireless LAN
activity. One interesting feature is that there's a small removable
cover on the end of the card's antenna hump that conceals a small
antenna connector.
Update 7/23/01 The Antenna
connector type is proprietary to ORiNOCO. See
this page for information on obtaining adapters.
If you want to add desktop clients that don't have PCMCIA card
slots to your wireless network, Buffalo has both ISA-to-PCMCIA
and PCI-to-PCMCIA adapter cards available. Most other vendors
have only PCI adapters, and you can't get them as of Sept 2000.
However, you need to buy both the PC Card LAN card and
the adapter of your choice, raising the cost of adding a wireless
station to about $200 for desktops (Yeowch!)
Drivers for Win 95/98/NT and 2000 only are available, so Linux &
NetWare users will have to go elsewhere for their LAN card needs.
Tip: 3/01 A
MacOS driver is now available
for download from Buffalo Tech, but they do not provide
support for it.
Driver installation went smoothly on my Win98SE Compaq 1650 laptop,
with the setup wizard installing the card's driver and Client
Manager (CM) program. The Client Manager is a System Tray
application used to monitor the wireless link quality and set
some connection parameters (see the screen shots below).
The CM's System Tray icon (not shown below) reminds me of a cell
phone signal indicator, dynamically showing the number
of "bars" of signal. Putting the cursor over the
icon gives you a reading of signal "Condition" and the
bandwidth mode currently being used, so you can get just about
all the information you need about the signal state without cluttering
up your laptop's screen with the CM Window. Check out the
screen shots below to get a feel for the CM.
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