As an owner of the D-Link DWL-122 USB wireless card I was very interested in this post @xlr8yourmac web site. The new driver does work great. Since it comes with a 5-6 ft cord I can set it in my window and can pickup wireless from 4-5 of my neighbors access. Where as the PC wireless card only picks up my access unless I'm outside. You can also unplug and re-plug the card without needing to restart the machine. The new driver is no longer labeled D-link nor does it have a D-link logo at all. I'm guessing it was made by the chip maker Prism as a general Mac driver . So I am guessing that a new version may at some point remove the included drivers for other USB devices. So get it while you can! I only paid $12.95 after rebate for the D-link USB adapter! I looked through the drivers files and found support for the following USB devices. It is also possible other devices with Prism chips could be made to also work. :
D Link DWL-122
LinkSys Instant USB Wireless Adapter versions 2.5, 2.6 & 2.7
LinkSys Compact Wireless USB Adapter W USB12
Microsoft USB Wireless
Netgear MA 111 USB
Sagen 802.11b USB Dongle
Intersil Prism 2 USB versions 1,2,3,4,5
Will S
New Wireless Driver for Prism USB devices
A newer driver (version 1.4.7) for D-Link's DWL-122 has surfaced, with excellent functionality and many nice surprises. Over the last year or so, a lot of bad press and flaming forum posts from Mac users have accumulated for D-Link's DWL-122. The problems seem to have been with the driver. I (personally) and many others had freezes so often with the 1.3.2 and 1.3.1 versions, but 1.4.7 seems to have those licked.
An interesting thing about D-Link's latest, version 1.4.7, (see drivers page) , it seems to recognize _many_ different Prism-based devices, and not just D-Link's. If you look at the extension 'Intersil Prism2.kext", specifically at the Info.plist, you will see not just the DWL-122 listed in the IOKitPersonalities, but also at least 5 other USB Prism units - the Netgear MA111, and a MicroSloth USB Wireless device, to name a few. (there's a previous article here I did on editing the plist for Airport compatibility with MS's 802.11g PCI card. But with natively compatible 802.11g cards for under $40, it's not really worth it.-Mike)
I am currently using the Netgear MA111 with the 1.4.7 driver. It behaves very well now, with no freezes, panics, or dropped connections - after 2 days of heavy use. The driver seems stable (finally!!!) and now suddenly it doesn't need to be altered to work with USB wireless devices other than the DWL-122. I find it strange, even ironic, that someone has added support in their driver for other firms' cards, but I'm not complaining.
As I got the Netgear for free, it is a nice little backup/portable wireless unit. I originally bought the DWL-122 last fall for $30 at BestBuy, but returned it after so many freezes and problems. I am confident that it would now work fine with the actual D-Link unit. It also drives the Syntax USB-400 unit equally now, though a hack to edit the product and vendor ID's in the Info.plist is necessary for this to work.
Though all of these devices are rated at just 11mbps, they typically can be bought for less than $10 now. Their small pen-drive size makes them very nice to take along for quick wireless connectivity on the go.
Hope this helps some poor soul out there that still has the 1.3.2 driver.
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