RTL8188FTV Frustrations!

trurune · Wednesday at 12:56 PM

I recently attempted to purchase an RLT8188CUS after recommendation in this post. I went to purchase it. To my horror, after a very long wait, it eventually arrived, I tested it under Linux, Windows and FreeBSD, and all said it was instead an RTL8188FTV! Do I need to go out and get an RTL8188CUS, or is there any way to make my RTL8188FTV function at all under FreeBSD? bsdconfig didn't seem to like it much and just didn't recognise it. usbconfig reports it as an FTV but doesn't specify any driver or anything

I've seen some posts on this, but a lot are from quite a long time ago and I want to see if anything has changed since.

I'd be grateful for help on this! Thank you!

LillieNB · Wednesday at 2:56 PM

trurune said:
Do I need to go out and get an RTL8188CUS, or is there any way to make my RTL8188FTV function at all under FreeBSD? bsdconfig didn't seem to like it much and just didn't recognise it. usbconfig reports it as an FTV but doesn't specify any driver or anything

First of all I had quite similar issues two weeks ago, and a lot of trouble getting the right adapter to work.
Can you boot a FreeBSD live system, and show me the output of dmesg ?
The live system is the third option of the first bsdinstall screen if I am not wrong.

My recommendation would be a USB ethernet adapter based on the AX88179A chip since they are very well supported on FreeBSD.
After that go to the last message of my Thread Interface flapping on ethernet USB adapter to see how to load up the cdce driver instead of the axge one since axge has bugs right now.

trurune · Wednesday at 4:50 PM

Booted into the live system and it was just
ugen0.5: <Realtek 802.11n> at usbus0

LillieNB · Wednesday at 5:23 PM

Realtek 802.11n

This is the real chipset inside your device.
Looking at the hardware notes of FreeBSD 14.2 your device should support the rtw88 driver.
The problem is you need this package installed or build as a port in order to get your pcie device recognized as the driver itself does not seem to be integrated into the FreeBSD base system directly.

Can you somehow download the wifi-firmware-rtw88-kmod pkg or port files on another OS?
If yes, you could just install the pkg without having internet access, and then setting up the internet access after installation.

nxjoseph · Wednesday at 5:33 PM

LillieNB said:
This is the real chipset inside your device.

It seems to be a usb device, i think this is the usb wifi dongle. I assume internal wifi is an pci-e device, it should not show as usb device.

LillieNB said:
Looking at the hardware notes of FreeBSD 14.2 your device should support the rtw88 driver.

I couldn't find a mention about the RTL8188FTV.

LillieNB said:
The problem is you need this package installed or build as a port in order to get your pcie device recognized.

Isn't OP talking about usb wifi dongle which is rtl8188FTV?

What does the command below show for the usb wifi dongle? assuming you are on freebsd and it is called ugen0.5.

Code:

# usbconfig -d ugen0.5 dump_device_desc

LillieNB · Wednesday at 5:39 PM

I couldn't find a mention about the RTL8188FTV.

Look at his dmesg output.
His chipset is recognized as an Realtek 802.11n.
This chipset is supported in the hardware notes.

I had a similar problem.
lsusb was always showing AX88179 no matter the ethernet adapter, but dmesg showed the right chipset inside my ethernet adapter.

miscreant · Wednesday at 9:35 PM

trurune said:
I recently attempted to purchase an RLT8188CUS after recommendation in this post. I went to purchase it. To my horror, after a very long wait, it eventually arrived, I tested it under Linux, Windows and FreeBSD, and all said it was instead an RTL8188FTV! Do I need to go out and get an RTL8188CUS, or is there any way to make my RTL8188FTV function at all under FreeBSD? bsdconfig didn't seem to like it much and just didn't recognise it. usbconfig reports it as an FTV but doesn't specify any driver or anything

I've seen some posts on this, but a lot are from quite a long time ago and I want to see if anything has changed since.

I'd be grateful for help on this! Thank you!

Try the rtwn driver seeing as it is the driver for RTL8188CUS and you have the RTL8188FTV. If the rtwn driver does not work then I would return it, you should get the product you paid for. I recently purchased a TP-Link Archer T2U Plus, very affordable and it works great with FreeBSD. I am using the rtwn driver with it.

trurune · 2025-02-20T00:23:40+0000

miscreant said:
Try the rtwn driver seeing as it is the driver for RTL8188CUS and you have the RTL8188FTV. If the rtwn driver does not work then I would return it, you should get the product you paid for. I recently purchased a TP-Link Archer T2U Plus, very affordable and it works great with FreeBSD. I am using the rtwn driver with it.

Could you by any chance link me to the TP-Link adapter? Beginning to lose hope with this RTL.

miscreant · 2025-02-20T21:52:47+0000

For sure, don't know what country you're in but the one I have is

https://www.amazon.ca/TP-Link-Arche...40087591&sprefix=acher+t2u+pls,aps,149&sr=8-1

but this one looks more like what you purchased, if you don't want the antenna

https://www.amazon.ca/TP-Link-Arche...591&sprefix=acher+t2u+pls,aps,149&sr=8-2&th=1

both are listed in the 14.2 hardware notes under rtwm\_usb

FreeBSD 14.2 Hardware Notes

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.

www.freebsd.org