Hello,

I would like to calculate how much will the Zaurus of my dreams will cost.
I want a C3000, but with the wifi.

How much would a wifi card cost?

PS: I want to run Familiar Linux on it too (it's for developpement purpose...)

About $50 to $100 for a wireless wifi card. Get an 802.11b card, as none of the g ones are supported, afaik. I use the D-link one, which works beautifully.

$50 - $100 is a fair estimate.

You can also check out ebay for wireless cards and occasionally you will get a very good price (like sub $40) or a low power card too.

Before you buy, do a research on power consumption of WiFi cards.
Some cards suck battery power like anything thereby reducing battery life on your Zaurus very fast while online, while some (like the Socket low power Wifi / Symbol Spectrum 24 Networker card) are much better at preservinbg the precious juice in the battery (though I dont think you really have to worry that much with a C3000, I had to cound every second on my C750 which has half the battery life of the C3000)

I just got the SL-C3000, and am using an Ambicom wifi card with it - the battery life is absolutely stunning. Last night, I was using wifi almost constantly, for about 4.5 hours, downloading lots of ipkgs, surfing the web with Opera, etc. And still had about 50% battery capacity left after all that time.

I used to think that my Sony TH-55 had great battery life, when I could surf for 4 hours, before the battery tanked. ;-) Of course, the Clie isn't quite as much of a handful. ;-)

I'm currently having a few problems with my fairly old Ambicom WIFI CF card and the SL-C3000. The light tends to continuously blink and the card doesn't work every fourth or fifth time I try connecting. I didn't have this problem on my old C700 with the same card.

Do you have this problem? If not, could you please tell me what the output is from the "cardctl ident" command issued from the command line (with the Ambicom card inserted)?

Thanks!

sorry to the previous poster - I should have changed my signature.

I dont have the Ambicom card anymore - it consumed too much power for me on my C750 (just laster 10 -15 mins on a full charge while online).

So I went ahead and changed it getting a Symbol Networker card - its great on power - goes for 30-40 mins on a full charge.

Sorry I could do the cardctl ident for the Ambicom...

# ./cardctl ident
Socket 0:
product info: "AmbiCom", "WL1100C 802.11b CF-Card", "2.2"
manfid: 0xd601, 0x0002
function: 6 (network)


I actually did have the problem you describe, when I first tried the card. It would work perhaps 1 out of every 4 times. Then I updated the configuration on my Linksys AP to use a Short Preamble, instead of Long Preamble, and it works every time, without fail.

- Rich

I'v got the cheapest cf wireless card I could find on ebay - about £20 $35.
uses prism2 chipset, has pink sticker and works brilliantly. I use it to set up and map wireless networks. Never had problem with it, batery life excelent not 4 hours, but probably a good 2 on decent charge. Range wise I get better and faster reception on my z than I do from the us adaptor on my laptop.
Now with these cheap cards the blue ones (prism1) work out of the box on ALL zaurus models. Just run ebay search for wireless cf - you'll find them -)
The pink ones need a couple of lines entered into the cardctl ident and then they work great. Anybody wants the cardctl file I use email me and I'll send it to you :-)
So my advice is get the cheapest card going :-)

They're Mercury cards.
:-)

Also called origo (spotted that from my own blurb lol)

Are the any cards that have kernel support already built into the Sharp ROM of the C1K?

And also, are there any SD based wifi cards that also contain storage space, so that it would be feasible to have a cache on the card while also having it provide wifi support? And of course if that card's drivers were already supported in the kernel that would be the ultimate. Am I dreaming or does such a card exist?

Thanks,

gdog