The mythbox will live either behind the TV or eventually in the basement. Running wired ethernet isn’t practical, so I’ll have to use a wireless adapter.

I chose the D-Link WDA-1320. It’s supported by madwifi on Linux and other people didn’t have much trouble getting it to work. Always a plus in Linux.

I had to fart around getting the damn thing to work for a few hours. I consider myself lucky since I read posts about people spending 10+ with other adapters. Most of the time was spent going between the Network and Wireless Assistant panels. Long story short, I edited my /etc/rc.d/rc.local file and everything works.

modprobe ath_pci
ifconfig ath0 up
iwconfig ath0 essid “[name OF WIRELESS ROUTER]”
ifconfig netmask [typically 255.255.255.0]
route add default gw [ip OF ROUTER>]

I didn’t even make a new device in the Network panel. All that seemed to do was screw things up. Even changing the settings in the Wireless Assistant caused problems. If I told it to automatically connect to a certain wireless device upon start-up, it would hang and not do it. I could manually connect after I got to the Desktop, but not automatically during start-up. rc.local is called after the start-up scripts are run and it avoids that problem.

Wireless works, but I am a little concerned about moving the box downstairs. I’m getting an ok signal from across the living room, but I don’t know how things will fare in the basement. I suppose I could always make an antenna extension, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes.