Last night I sat down after dinner with the laptop, and powered up. Nicole was watching some child psychology type programme (there seem to be a growing number of these ... almost as many as the cosmetic surgery programmes!), so I wasn't paying too much attention. She then asked me to check for a 'duplo pirate ship' for DanDan and some 'Levi 592' jeans for her, on eBay next time I went upstairs on the PC. A few minutes later I replied that there weren't either. A quizzical look came over her face, as she tried to figure out whether she'd fallen asleep or just not notice me go upstairs. I turned the laptop round for her to see the eBay results page.
I have been trying to sort out the wireless on the laptop for some time, over a year in fact. I bought an Access Point and 'g' rated PCMCIA card, but unfortunately, it didn't work under Linux. I then bought a second hand 'b' rated PCMCIA card, which also didn't work, due to it having a Prism 2.5 chipset, which wasn't supported in the current kernel. I downloaded a 2.6 kernel and the source drivers from the prism website and completely fail on several attempts to get it working. With my new 2.6.8 kernel all the drivers are precompiled. Stick the 'b' rated card in, and it works flawlessly. I haven't tried the 'g' rated card yet, but then I need to find where I've hidden it first :)
At least it means I don't have to go and buy another wireless card.
