Comment 67 for bug 63989

stani:
I'm getting inconsistent results. I have several prism-based cards.

Two have the 1.8.2 firmware and works, except that it's slow as snot.
One is too old to have a newer firmware so it has 1.5.6 and works with WEP but not open networks (no WPA, too old).
One is ripped from an access point and has the 1.8.2 firmware on it. Scanning doesn't work at all with this one but connecting manually sorta works (but slow).

None of them seem to really work well. I could go swapping firmwares and see if that results in some improvement but that would only help advanced users. I'm inclined to drop the issue and not worry about it anymore as I don't have any machines that really need to use one of these cards anymore. I imagine the hostap driver devs feel the same way.

Interestingly they all work very nicely with kismet.

There is a good chance the orinoco drivers will work for you but then you get no WPA.