[ug-glug] opensolaris and wifi

[Valeri Galtsev]

I agree with the wisdom of avoiding broadcom wireless chipset.

In addition to not having published the specs for chipset they have bug in
DMA, that will make it work on 32 bit system only. So basically, you can
harness open source wireless driver (wherever it's possible), but only on
32 bit systems (unless I'm way behind news about broadcom wireless...
somebody, correct me). That open source driver, BTW, exists no thanks to
broadcom, but thanks to another group that disassebled brodcom driver (I
guess they reside in one of the countries where this is legal), and
published the specs for the chipset, and another group  wrote the driver
from scratch based on these specs (so-called "clean room" approach,... Was
that Award BIOS that was first written this way?).

Thanks.
Valeri
On Mon, April 28, 2008 4:45 pm, Frank Pittel said:
>
> Unfortunatly I'm not nearly good enough of a programmer to write
> my own driver. I checked the hardware compat page and the "ndis
> wrapper" is the supported method of getting my wifi card to work
> with opensolaris. I may give it a try if I give up on Ubuntu.
> Ubuntu is nice but to much like windows for my liking!!
>
> Frank
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 04:17:21PM -0400, Chip Bennett wrote:
>> Sounds like an opportunity.
>>
>> Chip
>>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: ug-glug-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:ug-glug-
>> > bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Eric Boutilier
>> > Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 2:03 PM
>> > To: Frank Pittel
>> > Cc: ug-glug at opensolaris.org
>> > Subject: Re: [ug-glug] opensolaris and wifi
>> >
>> > On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, Frank Pittel wrote:
>> > > I've recently decided to break open the piggy bank and
>> > > got a Dell laptop. It's an XPS M1530 with as memory serves
>> > > broadcom 4312 wifi adaptor. I was thinking of loading opensolaris
>> > > on it but would only be interested in doing so if there was a chance
>> > > of getting wifi to work. How is opensolaris about working on laptops
>> > > and wifi?
>> > >
>> > > Frank
>> > >
>> >
>> > Conventional wisdom is to avoid Broadcom I'm afraid. You can get it to
>> > work with "NDIS wrapper" technology and maybe other methods, but I
>> > personally don't think it's worth it. FWIW, the last I heard, Atheros
>> > was the most popular chipset among opensolaris laptop users. But there
>> > are other good options, e.g. I use the wpi driver for the Intel 3945
>> > Chipset that's in my Sun-issue Sony Vaio.
>> >
>> > But most importantly, the canonical site for laptop wifi is here:
>> > http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/wireless/
>> >
>> > Eric
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > ug-glug mailing list
>> > ug-glug at opensolaris.org
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
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> ug-glug at opensolaris.org
>


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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