No wireless interface, Broadcom BCM4306, bwi-driver

[Korger]

Hello,

I'm trying to get Wi-Fi to work on an old Dell Inspiron 2200, which uses the BCM4306 chipset.

Installed version ( uname -a):

FreeBSD dagobah 10.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE #0 r297264: Fri Mar 25 03:51:29 UTC 2016  root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

Installed wlan controller ( pciconf -lv):

none2@pci0:2:3:0:   class=0x028000 card=0x00031028 chip=0x432014e4 rev=0x03 hdr=0x00
  vendor  = 'Broadcom Corporation'
  device  = 'BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller'
  class  = network

Installed driver ( pkg info):

b43-fwcutter-015  Extracts firmware for Broadcom Wireless adapters
bwi-firmware-kmod-3.130.20  Broadcom AirForce IEEE 802.11 Firmware Kernel Module

Content of /boot/modules:

-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  103608 Apr 25 22:58 bwi_v3_ucode.ko

At this point I can do kldload bwi_v3_ucode and it loads without a problem. But now if I type kldload if_bwi, I get the following message:

bwi0: <Broadcom BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless Lan> mem 0xdfdfe000-0xdfdfffff irq 19 at device 3.0 on pci2
bwi0: BBP: id 0x4306, rev 0x3, pkg 0
bwi0: MAC: rev 5
bwi0: PHY: type 2, rev 2, ver 2
bwi0: RF: manu 0x17f, type 0x2050, rev 2
bwi0: invalid antenna gain in sprom
bwi0: can't create parent DMA tag
device_attach: bwi0 attach returned 12

After this, the wlan interface is still not listed in the output of ifconfig -l, and I'm stuck. What is the meaning of that "can't create parent DMA tag" message, and how could I resolve it?

Any ideas are highly appreciated.

 

[kpa]

Driver problems are best addressed at the freebsd-wireless mailing list, the "invalid antenna gain in sprom" line is a clear sign that this is either a too new revision of the hardware for the driver or there is a regression in the bwi(4) driver on FreeBSD 10.3.

 

[Korger]

Thanks! The problem was that bwi(4) can't handle BCM4306 rev3, only rev2. I've changed the driver to bwn(4) and now it's working. In fact, I'm posting this message from that machine, my first FreeBSD installation!