HP Compaq with TL-WN881ND

Hi,
I'm new to both FreeBSD & community. Please be patient with me.

I've a HP Compaq DC7700 small factor PC, installed FreeBSD OS. I've bought TL-WN881ND PCI express card, as my PC doesn't have one to connect to wifi. I did install on to my PC, but, can't install the drivers, as they are compatible for windows.

So, I did mount the CD & try to compile using FreeBSD tools, but no luck, as the CD has .inf & .exe files only.

I did try another alternative, which is to download Linux drivers for TL-WN881ND, copied into a USB, mounted on to PC & try to compile the Linux drivers, still no use.

So my last hope is you(community). Can anyone help me to install drivers for TL-WN881ND PCI card.

Thanks
 
Hi VladiBG,

Thanks for your reply. I've tried the following command:

Code:
sysctl net.wlan.devices

Nothing showed up. I'm not sure whether TL-WN881ND is supported by FreeBSD. If it supports, then can you point me where I can find drivers of TL-WN881ND for FreeBSD. All I can find are either Windows or Linux drivers for TL-WN881ND.
 
There's 2 versions of TL-WN881ND

TP-LINK TL-WN881ND Atheros
TP-LINK TL-WN881ND v2.x Realtek

If you have v1.x your PCI card is with Atheros AR9287 which is supported by ath_hal(4) part of ath(4)
If you have v2.x your PCI card is with Realtek chip Realtek RTL8192EE;RTL8192EE, G9H87H1 GG39 and not all of them have support by rtwn(4)and you can't use this card as there's no driver for it.

Check the output of pciconf -lv to identify your card or dmesg

And then try to load the driver with kldload
 
OMG!!! my PCI driver is v2.x, which is Realtek RTL8192EE 😭. So FreeBSD doesn't support it at all. I bought this PCI driver recently, guess I've to return it back.

When I check rtwn(4), it says, it supports RTL8192E, isn't it the same as RTL8192EE?
Check the screenshot attached.

Can you suggest some PCI cards which are compatible with FreeBSD. Thanks
 

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Bash:
pciconf -lv
output

Bash:
none1@pci0:32:0:0: class=0x028000 card=0x819610ec chip=0x818b10ec rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
device = 'RTL8192EE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter'
class = network

In
Code:
dmesg
output, I don't see the RTL8192EE or TL-WN881ND. I even tried
Code:
dmesg | grep 'Realtek'
All I got was some HDA CODEC, Audio Function Group, Rear Analog and Front Analog drivers.

My FreeBSD Version: 12.1-RELEASE r354233 GENERIC amd64

NOTE: Regards to the FCC link, I got this line, You are not authorized to access this page

Thanks VladiBG for all your help.
 
Ok try to load the driver rtwn(4)

It may not work as it's RTL8192EE not RTL8192E and rtwn_pci(4) only support RTL8188CE/RTL8188EE chipsets


 
Hi VladiBG ,
I tried to load rtwn(4), but no luck. See my /boot/loader.conf attached

/etc/rc.conf

Bash:
wlans_rtwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA SYNCDHCP"

Did run the following to restart
Bash:
sh /etc/netstart

The PCI driver still doesn't show up in ifconfig.

I also found the RTL8192EE drivers for Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. Following is what I did:
  1. copied each of these windows versions .sys and .inf files into a USB
  2. mount each of the windows version files separately and try to compile them to .ko file using ndisgen
When I try to use ndisgen, it says the following:
Bash:
ndiscvt: creating .INF file - no entries created, are you using the correct files?
CONVERSION FAILED

If I couldn't use RTL8192EE, then can you suggest some other PCI drivers that works with FreeBSD. Thanks
 

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