[driverloader] Success with the BCM4301

[mfeit+linuxant at notonthe.net]

Thanks to Marc (and the wonders of ssh and screen), I've had success
getting the Dell TrueMobile 1180 MiniPCI card working flawlessly under
RedHat 9.  This card is actually a Broadcom BCM4301MP, which can be
found in a number of other products including PCMCIA and PCI cards.
(Later Linksys WMP11s come to mind.)

The problem was that the driver Dell provides is woefully out of date
and doesn't work with driverloader.  Marc has obtained a copy and said
he will be investigating why it doesn't work properly, because it
should.

One driver that works is for Belkin's F5D7010 54g card, available at
http://web.belkin.com/support/download/files/F5D7010-v2.4.4.exe.  The
file is a ZIP file, and you'll find the right bits and pieces in
\program files\Belkin\Belkin 54Mbps Wireless Utility\Driver\PCI.  Note
that the .ntf file in that directory is actually the .inf that
driverloader wants to see.  I've done a number of large rsyncs over
the last couple of hours and the card hasn't burped once.

One thing important to dual-booters: Under Linux, this combination of
hardware, driver and driverloader blows the doors off the Orinoco card
I was using.  The bad news is that every version of the Broadcom XP
driver I've ever tried with this card has yielded abysmal performance.
Given that I now have the same NDIS code in both places and one runs
it much faster, I think I have a good idea where to pin the blame.
Mr. Gates, may I introduce your company to the cluebat?  :-)

Linuxant's getting my $20.  I may have spent $65 on the card, but not
having it suck down the batteries when I'm not even using it and not
having the extra appendage sticking out of a PCMCIA slot is worth the
price of admission.

							- Mark
-- 
"Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who
 can't talk for people who can't read."		  -- Frank Zappa