Wireless hardware support

From: Will Saxon (WillS_at_housing.ufl.edu)
Date: 04/27/05

  • Next message: Daniel Hyde: "Re: Wireless hardware support" 
    Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 19:00:06 -0400
To: <stable@freebsd.org>

    I recently purchased a Netgear WG311 card based on the fact that the
    manpage for ath(4) says it is a supported card. As it turns out, at
    least version 2 (the version I had) of this card is not supported - it
    appears to be based on a Texas Instruments chipset that it not
    supported by anything other than Windows. I was able to use the card
    with the ndis wrapper, however it didn't work very well; console
    messages stated that the driver was buggy and in fact my system would
    panic randomly with the driver loaded.

    I returned the card this afternoon and swapped it out for another
    card, a D-Link DWL-G520. While this particular model number is not
    listed on the ath(4) manpage, it is listed as a supported ath(4)
    device on the 5.3-RELEASE hardware notes for i386. Also, it is listed
    at the atheros webpage linked from that same document. However, at
    least revision B3 of this card ALSO is not supported by the ath
    driver. I get the following error message when I try to load the
    driver:

    ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xd0000000-0xd000ffff irq 16 at device 6.0 on pci5
    ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13
    device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6

    I am able to use this card via the ndis wrapper, however I get
    numerous console messages like these (I renamed the device ath with
    ndiscvt):

    ath0: set filter failed: 45
    ath0: couldn't change DS config to 2417000kHz: 19
    NDIS: open file /compat/ndis/regAdd.txt failed: 2

    I fixed the latter by touching the file. I have no idea what it is
    supposed to do - there is no file by that name on the CD that came
    with the card and I am not sure what it is for.

    Interestingly, the DWL-G520 is supposed to be an 802.11b/g part only
    however the NDIS driver 'detects' 802.11a modes. Also the NDIS driver
    does not detect the 108Mbps 'Super' mode that the card advertises on
    the box.

    Thankfully, no panics yet with the D-Link card and the NDIS driver.

    Does anyone have a suggestion for a PCI wireless card that is
    natively supported by FreeBSD?

    -Will 

    --
Will Saxon
Systems Programmer, Network Services
University of Florida Department of Housing
Phone: (352) 392-2171 x10148
Email: wills@housing.ufl.edu
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  • Next message: Daniel Hyde: "Re: Wireless hardware support"

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