Solid wireless PCI adapter for 64 bit OS?

[angelicvoices]

I'm about at my witt's end. After fighting with inferior consumer grade USB adapter after another, I finally found the CISCO AIR-PI21AG adapter. This thing is.. was.. great. Much faster, solid connection, no drops. Perfect. Well, when I upgraded my computer I found it wasn't compatible with my motherboard. Went out and bought a WMP200 PCI adapter, which was.. okay. Better than most anything else I'd had, but still nothing like the P121AG.

 

Now, I've upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit and apparently Cisco does not support 64 bit operating systems at all. What crock.

 

I have no idea what to get now. I'm currently on a Netgear WMP111 which is crap.. crawls compared to my PCI adapters. My speeds seriously just got cut by 2/3. I've also tried Linksys (consumer grade Cisco) USB stuff and have not been happy.

 

Any suggestions? I'm thinking something using an Atheros chip since I've had awesome luck with them in notebooks. I am also open to replacing my Linksys WRT54G adapter, if anyone has a better suggestion.

[cjloki]

I'm about at my witt's end. After fighting with inferior consumer grade USB adapter after another, I finally found the CISCO AIR-PI21AG adapter. This thing is.. was.. great. Much faster, solid connection, no drops. Perfect. Well, when I upgraded my computer I found it wasn't compatible with my motherboard. Went out and bought a WMP200 PCI adapter, which was.. okay. Better than most anything else I'd had, but still nothing like the P121AG.

 

Now, I've upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit and apparently Cisco does not support 64 bit operating systems at all. What crock.

 

I have no idea what to get now. I'm currently on a Netgear WMP111 which is crap.. crawls compared to my PCI adapters. My speeds seriously just got cut by 2/3. I've also tried Linksys (consumer grade Cisco) USB stuff and have not been happy.

 

Any suggestions? I'm thinking something using an Atheros chip since I've had awesome luck with them in notebooks. I am also open to replacing my Linksys WRT54G adapter, if anyone has a better suggestion.

i'm not sure this is the right solution for you but i now have 3 of these in my home and they're fantastic for my purposes....umm well i know you want pci adapter but at 300mbps i'v been quite satisfied...one is on my nettybook and one on my folding rig which i game the heck out of too....just a thought ... B:)

[Zertz]

My D-Link DWA-542 works perfectly fine in Windows 7 64 bit.

[slick2500]

Yeah Cisco tends to do the same thing with some Linksys products, I have this really awesome Linksys wireless card but they don't make 64 bit drivers for it and they don't plan to. When are companies gonna realize that 64 bit computing is not gonna go away with 4, 6, and 8GB of ram becoming more and more commonplace the transition to a 64 bit environment is not going to stop increasing.

[angelicvoices]

Zertz - I will look into the D-Link adapter, thanks.

 

cjloki - -what- exactly do you have 3 of? I'm not seeing exactly what you use.. If it works that well I'd go back to USB or whatever, it's just my experience has been much better with the PCI adapters I've used.

Edited December 31, 2009 by angelicvoices

[cjloki]

Zertz - I will look into the D-Link adapter, thanks.

 

cjloki - -what- exactly do you have 3 of? I'm not seeing exactly what you use.. If it works that well I'd go back to USB or whatever, it's just my experience has been much better with the PCI adapters I've used.

oops sorry, that was a silly brainfart..lol.... i meant this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833162027

that was just dumb...

[angelicvoices]

oops sorry, that was a silly brainfart..lol.... i meant this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833162027

that was just dumb...

 

That's okay. LOL I was thinking there was something wrong with me and I couldn't read..

 

Buffalo.. that's definitely intriguing as I know they made some really fantastic wireless g routers back in the day before that whole lawsuit business.. thanks!

 

ETA: Are you sure it works with 64 bit? I'm not seeing any driver support and Newegg specifically says 32 bit Vista..

Edited December 31, 2009 by angelicvoices

[cirro]

i have a wireless adpater im selling . used it for 2 days orignally then about 3 days when i moved.

 

always got my highspeed installed too quick to ever need it :}

 

this it is..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...2-227-_-Product

 

 

I also have a set of US Robotics PCI -> Wireless. They are old but proven themselves to me over the ages

Edited December 31, 2009 by cirro

[cjloki]

That's okay. LOL I was thinking there was something wrong with me and I couldn't read..

 

Buffalo.. that's definitely intriguing as I know they made some really fantastic wireless g routers back in the day before that whole lawsuit business.. thanks!

 

ETA: Are you sure it works with 64 bit? I'm not seeing any driver support and Newegg specifically says 32 bit Vista..

 

yea like i said i use it on my netty which runs 32 bit w7 pro, my folding machine which runs 64 bit w7 pro and occasionally on my gamer,also 64 b it w7 pro, when i'm working on it on the bench.....one last use is at work on my office puter which runs 32 bit vista ultimate...i have no problems with any of them but i have no way to know what your experience will be....

the drivers that come in the box haven't failed yet and so far w7 hasn't found anything better...i run a linksys wireless router,b,g, on a cable modem at home and the work modem is phoneline dsl and linksys wireless router. maybe that's why they seem so fast, i dunno but i have no great luv for linksys/cisco adapters either...

[Crazy_Nate]

We just had a pain of a time getting USB wireless drivers working on W7 x64...went through one card, and finally got the second working (linksys wusb54g).

 

We had to use drivers from the chip manufacturer, not the card manufacturer. What a pain, but, whatever. It would have been a PCI card, but with drivers being hit or miss you can get BSODs as a result - not fun.

 

Work with it, you'll pull your hair out, but, there are a lot of us that have gone through the same thing. The manufacturers will eventually give in and make proper drivers. Until then, complain directly to them!

[cjloki]

We just had a pain of a time getting USB wireless drivers working on W7 x64...went through one card, and finally got the second working (linksys wusb54g).

 

We had to use drivers from the chip manufacturer, not the card manufacturer. What a pain, but, whatever. It would have been a PCI card, but with drivers being hit or miss you can get BSODs as a result - not fun.

 

Work with it, you'll pull your hair out, but, there are a lot of us that have gone through the same thing. The manufacturers will eventually give in and make proper drivers. Until then, complain directly to them!

before i switched to the buffalo i had that same adapter and w7 kept trying to update it with railink drivers that were only partially working if at all...infuriating fo sho....as you can see i gave up, the wusb54g works fine in the worker rig with vista prem 32bit but nowhere else...

[Crazy_Nate]

We got the Ralink 2500 (or whatever they were) drivers working. I think we found them on a thread on the linksys forum. We had to uninstall the device, and then research for it with the internet unplugged so it wouldn't get broken drivers from the internet. The drivers were installed locally, by pointing it to the exact directory and nothing else. The W7 automatic drivers are nice when they work, but are a bit of a pain when they don't. x64 drivers are getting better (for the major parts, they're fine), however, I couldn't believe how much trouble we had with a wireless card... Luckily, the computer store we were buying the new one from had a Shuttle PC with internet so we did some major research before we decided which to buy