UglyJoe said:
Any update on progress on this driver?
So far, no. I'm hoping to be available to work with EMC in about 2-3 weeks perhaps. The problem with these cards is that they're all based on Broadcom's
wl5 code, and neither
bwi nor
bwn modules will work with the "newer" Broadcom cards. In fact, on 64 bit versions,
bwn, if it detects the cards at all will panic hard. I had to remove several PCI ID's from the
/usr/src/sys/dev/siba/siba_bwn.c code (and reported it numerous times) since
bwn doesn't work with them anyway after failing to attach and then spitting the bit in the kernel, going four paws to the moon. Jeung walked away from bwn over a year ago now.
I've tried all sorts of tricks myself with NDIS, and although the cards get detected and attached and even have their firmware uploaded through NDIS, they come up brain dead on channel 1, won't scan and when you go through the step of
# /etc/rc.d/netif restart
after manually trying to wake them up, kernel panic. Now I know
Richardpl has submitted new code to try to fix that, but not one line of it has made it into the kernel yet, not even the latest build of 10 current. For MY purposes, NDIS is hopelessly broken and is absolutely useless with Broadcom PCI-E stuff. I won't even get into how bad it gets if the card has bluetooth as well.
So ... Since we last visited this topic, the kernel folks have finally gotten some work in on 802.11n support, so there's some hope that wasn't there before.
bwi and
bwn clearly ain't gonna cut it since the cards in question here are all
bcmwl5-based and there IS a Linux driver and library released by Broadcom which of course doesn't help us here in beastie-land.
I propose however that the only real way to go after this would be to take the code that Broadcom released for Linux and attempt to port the code to BSD. Either that, or snatch some Broadcom wiglets and hold them for ransom until they provide US a port.
EMC ... what should we do? Be happy to do what I can once I've moved into my new location after the end of this month ... but like it or not, BSD *MUST* support Broadcom, we have no choice. Every POS computer made lately has that stuff in them, and Apple has abandoned their users who bought in with Tiger, Leopard and now Snow Leopard. EVERY Apple user I talk to WANTS BSD on there. But they have Broadcom out the wazoo. It *must* get done, one way or another. We really have no choice anymore.
I wrote Windows drivers for years, I've cobbled BSD drivers here and there. I'm really not quite up to speed for something of this complexity, but I can certainly help if I can get a few other hands with a little more experience with the 802.11 stuff. Any takers?
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Finally for Dutch: I understand that this should go out on the "list" but I don't want to step on what's going on there until there's actually some degree of plan. I see they're insanely busy schmoozing
ath into working and so far, all we have here is a dollar and a dream. Thus, for the moment, I think this is a smarter place to build an army and at least indicate to the rest of the community how important dealing with Broadcom's mess truly is. Hope you'll forgive me.