DLink DWL-520
Reviewed by: MichaelRasmussen
Review Date: June 9, 2002
Model Number: DWL-520
Manufacturer: D-Link
Cost: $69.95 after $20 mail in rebate (Frys)
Operating Systems: Comes with Windows drivers on CD. Linux drivers seem to be available from wlan project.
Description
This is a Prism 2.5 based card. However it seems to require a PCI 2.2 slot for operation. This is not mentioned on the box. It is mentioned in the data sheet you can download from D-Link http://www.dlink.com/products/wireless/dwl520/ and explained in this FAQ ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/FAQ under question 4.
PCI 2.2 is a newish standard, if your motherboard documentation does not explicitly mention it you don't have it.
Hopefully someone with a system that supports this card will have something to add here.
For now I'm getting ready to drive to Wilsonville.
Update 06/12/2002
Seems to work fine on Intel based PCI 2.1 YMMV
I have a DWL-520 in a rather old machine (it's a P200 running on an Intel 430TX motherboard which supports PCI 2.1) and am currently using the Host AP driver for Intersil Prism 2/2.5/3 with no problems.
{{{Jun 10 11:24:30 blowfish kernel: PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb560, last bus=0 Jun 10 11:24:30 blowfish kernel: wlan0: Intersil Prism2.5 PCI: mem=0xe0410000, irq=7}}}
-Vigilant WLF
Update 6/14/2002
One of the most important things this works with is the Soekris http://www.soekris.com 4501. Namely that the card is 3v and the slot is PCI 2.2 or close enough.
I have deployed this in a decently old PII motherboard, the Intel SE2 based on the 440BX.
Also of note is that it works very well with the venerable HostAP drivers.