pciewifi
So to start I wasn't quite sure about where this question should be asked, so feel fre to relocate it if you want.
I'm setting up a system to notify me when a user enters an area. My plan is to use an old PCIE WiFi card powered from a small battery to detect when its within range. I want to know if a powered WiFi card needs to be initialized by the CPU or if a 5v power buss would be to have it show up in something like airodump-ng.
Thanks!
The statement:
Means:
The situation is confused by there being various sub-implementations or semi-non-standard or very non standard implementations. Note that when eg SATA is used the USB pins are "reserved" implying that you MAY in some cases be able totalk to a drive via SATA or USB2.
USB data is usually carried on pins 36 and 38 BUT no absolute guarantees.
This webpage does a fair job of showing standard and some non standard implementations
Clearer version on webpage.
Wikipedia on PCI express says as below, which covers the USB2 part of your query.
PCI Express Mini Card edge connector provide multiple connections and buses:
PCIe ×1
USB 2.0
SMBus
Wires to diagnostics LEDs for wireless network (i.e., Wi-Fi) status on computer's chassis
SIM card for GSM and WCDMA applications. (UIM signals on spec)
Future extension for another PCIe lane
1.5 and 3.3 volt power)
A typical PCI-e wireless LAN card whose webpage contains the search string you ask about has the picture below. And includes text
and
"via mini PCIe" and "equipped with mini PCIe" tell you that this is NOT an alternative to USB2.
That pretty much covers the PCI-e aspect of your query.
Many bus pinouts excellent
Including PCI-e
Gargoyling
produces a slew of material with that exact string, and many that answer your questions and various explanatory material as well.
It's pretty much impossible to answer this question, since Intel has not put forward a single page of information about the controllers. I've been registered with them since mid-January and it's been dead air since.
Best Answer
Absolutely it needs to be configured by a host CPU. A WiFi card is a pretty dumb device - it's up to the host CPU to configure it in the right operational mode, often give it a MAC address, and of course to handle all the WEP/WPA and the entire 802.11 and TCP/IP stacks.