Lefinnois.net

Trying to find a PCMCIA wifi adapter that don't use NDISwrapper is not easy. If you want monitor mode and RP-SMA connector, it's worst.

My choice is Trendnet TEW-441PC, simply because it's cheap . This card is supported by madwifi (half-free) and have all of the interesting modes. But there's not antenna connector. So, why not adding one ?External part of the card is very simple and have not critical component : two leds, two capacitors.

One the other side of the card we find two littles soldering points :

Résults. Without antenna :

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"OpenWrt"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.432 GHz  Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
          Bit Rate:24 Mb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=48/70  Signal level=-43 dBm  Noise level=-91 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:229  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

With antenna (from a Fonera) :

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"OpenWrt"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.432 GHz  Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
          Bit Rate:24 Mb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=61/70  Signal level=-30 dBm  Noise level=-91 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:278  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

The initial goal is not to have a TrendNet Card with an antenna but to put it in my iBook. Airport card under GNU/Linux is not the best way to have Wifi. Adding TrendNet card under the keyboard will need some tricks (the card is too big). This is the next step... and the upcoming post.