Linksys WMP54G Wireless PCI Card

[Musicman]

I intend to move an old PC away from the router it is currently near and use a wireless card, so that it can communicate with the WRT54 router. I am looking for a WPA enabled card, and was considering the WMP54G from Linksys, but I have seen very mixed reviews, which may be down to peoples incompetance, however one reviewer said that the PCI card crashed his system on bootup, due to incompatablity with the PCI bus. The card is going into an 450MHz pentium III machine, that will be used by my daughter.

Has anyone used this card, or can anyone recommend a reliable alternative.

TIA

[jonbr]

I have a Linksys wireless router. My laptop is wireless enabled but my daughters was not. I got one of the Belkin USB wireless dongles and set that up and it's worked perfectly since, that is three months now. It's one alternative.... :)

[Flubflow]

What operating system is on the old PIII-450 ?
The wmp54g supports Windows 98SE (not plain windows 98 or 95), ME, 2000 and XP

[Musicman]

Oops, forgot to say that the PC is running Windows 2000.

Also the USB is only a USB1.1 port, so that will make it a really slow option I believe.

Also the motherboard is PCI Version 2.1, which I have read somewhere on EBUYER, that will cause the PC to hang on bootup.

[jonbr]

The Belkin wireless USB dongle works fine on my daughters USB 1 port on her laptop. It comes with it's own drivers and works fine on Windows 2000 according to http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=201576&pcount=&Product_Id=179753&Section.Section_Path=%2FRoot%2FNetworking%2FWirele ssNetworking%2F80211gWi%2E%2E%2Etworking%2F

Also, as per an Intel FAQ, "USB 2.0 will be 480 Mb/sec, 40 times faster than USB 1.1" which makes USB 1.1 about 4Mbit/sec. Much faster than most broadband connections (in UK any way) these days so it will be fine, unless you are wanting to tranfer very large files all the time.

[Musicman]

The Belkin wireless USB dongle works fine on my daughters USB 1 port on her laptop. It comes with it's own drivers and works fine on Windows 2000 according to http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=201576&pcount=&Product_Id=179753&Section.Section_Path=%2FRoot%2FNetworking%2FWirele ssNetworking%2F80211gWi%2E%2E%2Etworking%2F

What security have you set up on this connection, as I have WPA on my other wireless connection, so I really want to use WPA on all my connections, as I believe you cannot have mixed security on a Linksys WRT54G router?

[Salu]

Anything useful in here?

http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=search&mode=results

[jonbr]

If I remember rightly, I've got 128 bit encryption. I've also restricted the mac addresses that can access the router to our own PC's only and also stopped the router braodcasting that it is there.

Hopefully, no one will see it, if they do get to it their network connection will be refused (unless they've cloned my mac addresses) and then they'd have to break the encryption. ;)