Sunday, January 25, 2009

Wireless cards.

I just finished swapping wireless cards between my Compaq laptop, and my two Acer laptops. I realized there are major differences between Atheros and Broadcom cards. Both my Acer Aspire One and Acer Aspire 4720Z came with Atheros AR242x WiFi cards. Same model in both. The Compaq F500 laptop came with a Broadcom 4311 WiFi card. I decided to see what was the better card. I started by swapping the Broadcom card into my Acer Aspire 4720Z. Booted up 8.10, and it was jumpy between 90% and 100% signal. Awesome. All I had to do to get it working was select the Broadcom STA wireless driver. I was gonna leave it in that laptop, but I take my Aspire One with me more now, so out of the 4720Z it came. Well, about 10 minutes later is when the One was apart and I realized the two cards were identical. Then out came the Atheros card, and in went the Broadcom card. About 10 minutes later, I booted up 8.10 on the One, selected the STA driver, restarted, and awesome signal. As I write this, I'm sitting on my front porch, where I used to get about 20% to 40% signal. Right now, I have 100% signal. After this mod to my One, I plan on trying to find another Broadcom card for my 4720Z. Oh, and the best part about this card? No more Madwifi drivers to compile. They aren't hard to compile, but it's really unnecessary work. It was well worth the effort.

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