[NTLK] Flashing a Lucent Wavelan Silver card to upgrade it to Gold

[David Arnold]

On 15/02/2010, at 10:10 AM, Riccardo Mori wrote:

hi Rick,

> I've read on the Web that it's possible to flash this card to upgrade its encryption, rendering it equivalent to a Lucent Gold card. I have found many sites which *talk* about it, but after losing time and patience, I haven't been able to find clear instructions or the resources to do that. I know it can be done with a PC, and I have an XP laptop for the job. Has anyone done this upgrade and can give me a quick tutorial, or point me to a Website with reliable info and resources?

IIRC (and it's ~10 years ago so that is uncertain) the "gold" variants of the WaveLAN/Lucent/Orinoco cards had support for both the 40-bit WEP that the "silver" (export) variants had, and also the 128-bit WEP that was allowed for US domestic use.  At some point the US export rules changed, and the "gold" variant was allowed to be sold internationally.

I never used WPA on these cards, although it's quite possible that later firmware versions supported it, perhaps still within the "gold" branding, but FWIW I don't think that was the original distinction between the "silver" and "gold" variants.



d