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Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:44:34 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Roland Smith <rsmith@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Half-Height (Mini-PCIe/PCI) Wireless NIC/Dongle (with HOSTAP
 Support) Recommendation
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On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, Roland Smith wrote:

> The most important thing about a card is finding out which chipset is used.
> Because that determines which FreeBSD driver to use.
>
> So look at the FreeBSD manpages for wifi chipsets (you can find most of them
> in the SEE ALSO section of wlan(4)) for those that fit your requirements.
> Then find a card that uses one of those chipsets.
>
> Unfortunately most no-name brands don't list it in the specs or on the box
> because they tend to grab whatever is available.
>
> But if you find a card that you like, you can download the windows driver and
> unpack it. Then you can usually see which chipset is used from the .inf file.

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Main_Page is very useful for this.  One way to 
get a particular card is by using a PCIe adapter card with a mini-PCIe 
notebook card.