2.6.22 kernel and WiFi

[Rick Stevens]

On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 15:28 -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 03:11:44PM -0400, Mark Haney wrote:
> > Karl Larsen wrote:
> > > John W. Linville wrote:
> 
> > >> The 4306 part should be well supported on all platforms with either
> > >> the new (default in F-7) or old bcm43xx drivers.  Be sure to extract
> > >> the firmware.  I suggest running bcm43xx-fwcutter on the wl.o file
> > >> from here:
> > >>
> > >>     http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
> > >>
> > >> Be sure to either reboot or 'modprobe -r bcm43xx-mac80211 ; modprobe
> > >> bcm43xx-mac80211' after extracting the firmware.  I would be very
> > >> surprised if your 4306 did not work afterwards.
> > >>
> > >> John
> > >>   
> > > Hi John, are you sure this will all run on a 64 bit kernel and computer?
> > > 
> > > Karl
> > > 
> > 
> > I've had the same thought, I initially was told it would NOT run 64-bit.
> >  But I'm gonna give it a shot and see how it flies.
> 
> Are you talking about the firmware?  It runs on the bcm43xx hardware,
> and bears no relationship to the architecture of the host CPU.
> 
> If you are/were an ndiswrapper user (please avoid it), then I suspect
> you might run into 32- vs 64-bit issues.  But that is because you
> would actually be running the windows driver on the host CPU --
> it has nothing to do with the Broadcom hardware itself.

I have to differ with you on that, John.  I run ndiswrapper for a
BCM4318 wifi on a 64-bit Athlon all the time using a Windows 64-bit DLL
for it.  Works a treat.  If you build ndiswrapper for your kernel AND
you use the correct DLL, then there's absolutely no 32/64-bit issue.
Ok, yes, I'm a "power user" and I build modules and kernels all the
time, but I stand by my statement.

Yes, I rebuild ndiswrapper for each kernel upgrade (no big deal...I do
it via a very simple script invoked from rc.local), but it's never
failed me.  The bcm43xx stuff has never been stable on my hardware.

Granted, I've not tried the latest versions, but ndiswrapper has worked
every time and I don't see any compelling reason to switch right now.
Perhaps when I have the time I'll try the new bcm43xx stuff, but for
now ndiswrapper works very reliably for me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   "Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?"  "I don't remember"  -
-                            -- Chumbawumba, "Amnesia" (TubThumping) -
----------------------------------------------------------------------