[laptop-discuss] Solaris 10 BCM4306 , no WPA?

[Ben Taylor]

Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> More to the point, you should complain to HP, and ask them to fix 
> their broken hardware that can only work properly with Windows.  
There has been a fair amount of consternation around HP's policy on 
this, and TBQH, I haven't
seen if anything has changed.  I know there hasn't been a BIOS update in 
a while, and really
don't expect one.
> The whitelist is a firmware *bug* in HP's BIOS, as far as I'm 
> concerned.  (Yes, NDIS and other such hacks can workaround the bug, 
> but lets not pretend that they are "fixes".)  If you're a big 
> corporate purchaser, you should pressure HP to either fix the bug or 
> replace all of your units with ones that can support a better WIFI part.
I am not in a position to replace my laptops.  I'm not in a position to 
buy a
laptop with the promise of a $50/month repayment.....  And as for putting
pressure on HP. heh. With top sales guy being a former (and probably
disgruntled) employee, this is probably as long a battle as Acroread on
x86.

I just vote +2 on the WPA feature for bcmndis.  If I'm the guy with these
parts and everyone else has moved to intel, or atheros, then I guess the
community has spoken (or folks who have those parts just don't care
about WPA).
>
> Add HP to my list of vendors not to purchase equipment from.
The laptops are a ZE4100 (P4M 1.7Ghz) and  a ZE5185 (P4 2.4Ghz), and 
while being a few years
old, are still very usable.  I am not happy about the white list, but 
there's
not much I can do.  I haven't bought HP since....
>
>    -- Garrett
>
> James Cornell wrote:
>> How's that my fault?  I don't buy from vendors that do such things  
>> because I know what I am looking for.  I'm sorry that you happened 
>> to  have chosen the wrong adapter, but you should take it back if  
>> possible.  I agree partially that drivers would help the adoption  
>> rate, and I'm sure Sun is willing to expand its development efforts  
>> into said devices, but there' so many of them out there we just 
>> can't  support them all.  This is the reason I brought up the 
>> sustainability  aspect, as Sun does not charge for licenses, only 
>> support, and even  gives media out to most people, there's a problem 
>> with balancing out  the money generated from support and other 
>> products, where it can  allow development of new drivers for devices 
>> that are 5x harder to  support due to many details being omitted.
>>
>> James
>> On Jun 6, 2008, at 10:15 AM, Ben Taylor wrote:
>>
>>  
>>> James Cornell wrote:
>>>    
>>>> Hi Yiannis,
>>>>
>>>> If you took basic economics you'd find out that there is always  
>>>> balance.  Efficiency is key, and it is an understatement to say  
>>>> that supporting Broadcom equipment is inefficient.  The lack of  
>>>> proper documentation is the problem, just as it has been discussed  
>>>> to death with Sun's older SPARC boards and OpenBSD, regarding 
>>>> NDA's  and availability.  Broadcom is an allusion to the old Sun 
>>>> way of  doing things.
>>>>
>>>> Supporting equipment without documentation and/OR source (Neither  
>>>> will happen in a workable state based on prior dealings) is near  
>>>> impossible.  Even with the most talented people working on the  
>>>> issue at hand, economically speaking it is exponentially more  
>>>> costly to support completely closed hardware, as it requires more  
>>>> developers, more man hours, more testing, and a slew of hardware  
>>>> acquisitions for the tests for multiple people no less.  A lot of  
>>>> the people involved with the actual porting of Broadcom hardware  
>>>> through reverse engineering are hired by corporations who can 
>>>> float  the labor bill.  Sun so far is mainly interested with Intel, 
>>>> AMD  and NVIDIA as they do not like vendors who provide no 
>>>> alternatives.
>>>>
>>>> Broadcom will not deliver binary for Solaris/OpenSolaris WIFI.   
>>>> Broadcom will not release specifications even under NDA.  Broadcom  
>>>> will not release source.  Broadcom will not support reverse  
>>>> engineered drivers or NDIS driven drivers.  Broadcom will not  
>>>> support 64-bit computing except through narrow channel OEM  
>>>> dealings.  Broadcom has always had bad PR with vendors who support  
>>>> and/or development hardware/software for multiple platforms.
>>>>
>>>> Nothing will change the fact this is impossible to support, I'd  
>>>> personally rather have NDIS support worked on than to try and 
>>>> write  a crippled reverse engineered driver, they are less reliable 
>>>> from  my experience than NDIS, and I really hate NDIS as it is.
>>>>
>>>> What's 10 bucks?  Well if you live in America that's nothing, with  
>>>> the gas prices, the bad economy that no one will admit to, the  
>>>> rising inflation, 10 bucks can barely afford you two drinks at  
>>>> Starbucks.  I'd personally drop Starbucks and opt for brewing my  
>>>> own, as I already have, and thus can buy better hardware because I  
>>>> am more efficient.
>>>>
>>>>       
>>> thanks.  $10 buying a new mini-pci card gets me a locked up laptop.  
>>> Did you not read *HP WhiteList*.
>>>
>>> You may think you're doing everyone a service by pontificating the  
>>> way you do, but half the
>>> you're just wrong.
>>>     
>>
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