From: "Karsten M. Self" kmself@ix.netcom.com
To: IWE iwe@www.vtluug.org
User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 18:19:35 +0000

Any y'all hardware weenies seeing problems with Linksys lately?

Be advised.

Peace.

--
Karsten M. Self kmself@ix.netcom.com http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
A few years ago you could buy a CD, knowing that it was a standard
product... Now, you...find that you can play it in your hi-fi, but
not in your car. Next time, you're not going to make that mistake,
you'll just log on to Kazaa and download an MP3.
-- Pete Chown, on why DRM (digital restrictions management) promotes piracy.

Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 19:22:11 -0800
From: Kim kgb6019@attbi.com
To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.9 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu)

Hi folks;

I hope others on SVLUG may find this info valuable.

For the past several months I have been planning and saving toward
severing the cat-5 teathers on my home computers and going wireless.

I made a list of hardware and software that seemed ideal based on
others success stories, and yesterday went out and splurged over
$430.00 on a Linksys WAP and Linksys wireless cards.

With my long awaited booty now in hand I plugged in the WAP (Linksys
WAP-11) and with great anticipation stuffed a Linksys WMP-11 into a
PCI slot.

With a bundle of HOWTOs in hand I started getting ready to set up the
WMP-11 card.

Right off the bat, a preliminary check with lspci reported a Broadcom
4301 chipset instead of the expected Intersil/Prism-2 chipset.

OK, no problem (or so I thought) and I went googling to find out what
driver supported this chip.

And what I spy with my googling eye becomes grimmer and grimmer...

It seems that sometime around the end of last year Linksys stopped
using the (Linux supported) Intersil chip in favor of the Broadcom
chip.

More googling dredged up reports of people who have attempted to
contact Broadcom for either a driver, or enough info to write one.
In all cases, Broadcom has refused to discuss Linux with any
developer or person who got stuck with these post-switcheroo cards.

Having been very happy with Linksys products for a number of years,
my hopes were high for a solution when I called the Linksys customer
support line.

After explaining to the Linksys support person why these cards were
no longer of any use to folks running Linux, I was told that a
superior would need to be consulted before an answer could be
forged.

I suggested (since I had already bought the hardware) that I would
find it acceptable if Linksys would simply take my new cards back
and send me the older ones. The official Linksys reply is below:

From: Manny Talavera Manny.Talavera@linksys.com
To: "'kgb6019@attbi.com'" kgb6019@attbi.com
Subject: Linksys Product Support
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 10:11:00 -0800
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)

Dear Valued Linksys Customer,

Thank you for contacting Linksys Customer Support. I apologize for the
inconvenience. The WMP11v2.7 will not work with Linux. There are no
drivers available and dont expect to have any in the future. I spoke to
a Supervisor regarding replacing the WMP11v2.7 for a WMP11. Linksys
will not replace the WMP11v2.7 for a WMP11. The WMP11v2.7 is replacing
the WMP11. Once again I apologize for the inconvenience.

If you need assistance regarding a question or issue with a Linksys
product, please contact us at 1 800 326 7114 or send me an email and I
will be glad to assist.

Sincerely,

Manny Talavera
Product Support Specialist
Email: manny.talavera@linksys.com
Linksys Product Support Phone Number: 1 (800) 326 7114
Fax Phone Number: 1 (949) 265 6655
RMA Phone Number: 1 (949) 271 5461

Well, that sure put the skids on my wireless plans, not to mention
crushing my belief that Linksys was a cool and frood company. Surly
they must have a few older models collecting dust that they could
use to keep a customer happy...

BTW: I don't think "inconvenience" as used in the above responce is
an adequate term. "Expensive disappointment" would be more accurate.

It remains to be seen how "inconvenient" trying to return this
useless hardware to the store will be. I'm hoping that Best Buy
won't give me lots of problems when I try to return the stuff this
weekend.

One other thing my googling turned up was a petition to Broadcom to
loosen the sphincter a bit and throw us Linux folks a bone. You can
find it here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/BCM4301/petition-sign.html?

If this kind of narrow minded Windows-only B.S. gets your Penguinista
blood boiling even just a bit, I urge you to take a few seconds to
read and lend your John Hancock to it. (I'm signer #120)

Well, so much for ranting. Thanks for reading. I better get busy
researching what cards out there (still) work with Linux...

Peace;

Mrs. Kim Genrich

From: Rob Nelson ronelson@vt.edu
To: "Karsten M. Self" kmself@ix.netcom.com, IWE iwe@labrador.vtluug.org
Subject: RE: [Iwe] Fwd: [svlug] Linksys drops ball for Linux users
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 14:05:31 -0500

>Any y'all hardware weenies seeing problems with Linksys lately?

Not a problem, per se....

>Right off the bat, a preliminary check with lspci reported a Broadcom
>4301 chipset instead of the expected Intersil/Prism-2 chipset.

The company in Taiwan that made the Prism2 chipset made their last run in
November. Hence, there are no more Prism2's being made. You can expect this
from a lot of wireless card makers. That would also be why Linksys won't
replace their newer cards with older ones - they just plain can't make the
chips for them anymore.

Rob Nelson
ronelson@vt.edu