Hacking the ol’ WaveLAN
Somewhere in my basement, collecting dust, is the good ol’ trusty 900MHz ISA WaveLAN card that would link me up to Doug’s apartment pre-DSL-days. Doug ‘aquired’ a NCR WaveLAN card with two antennas, and I was able to get a WaveLAN card on eBay. We hooked these guys into our Linux routers, hung some panel antennas out our apartment windows, and established a nice 1-2Mbs link for Quake! (Of course, we spent a few minutes trying to line up the antennas just right as our apartments were about 200 feet apart and didn’t quite face each other.) We were in complete Geekdom! Our network name: WGNET. (Wireless Grange Network… another story for another post…)
Hopefully someday we can establish the link again, or I can find some usefulness for this awesome card. I did find a great page for building antennas and amplifiers for this card! Hacking the Original 915MHz WaveLAN from the Low Cost Wireless Network How-To page.
I’ve also posted some information on designing and building your own 915MHz yagi antenna for less than US$10.