[Soekris] 802.11b: PCMCIA vs. MiniPCI?

[Chad R. Larson]

Unwrapped for those of us who don't use Windows to read mail...

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 04:08:00PM -0500, Victor Grau-Serrat wrote:
> I'm using Netgate both PCMCIA and MiniPCI wireless cards with HostAP
> drivers and they run fine under Linux (2.4.18).  The specifications
> say that for the PCMCIA (NL-2511CD PLUS EXT2) the output power is
> 200mW (23dBm), and for the MiniPCI (EL-2511MP PLUS) the specifications
> say that output power depend on input current: 160mW (22dBm) if input
> current is 750mA, and 65mW (18dBm) if input current is 500mA.
> Although the specifications from Soekris say that limited power is
> available from the PCI sockets (and I'm not using the standard one), I
> was expecting to get the desired 22dBm, but repeated measurements I've
> made indicate a difference of performance of 3 to 6 dB between the
> mentioned PCMCIA and MiniPCI, suggesting that the MiniPCI ones are
> much less powerful than the PCMCIA counterparts.
>
> Anyone has observed similar results?
> 
> V.