Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 29 Apr 2003 13:38:50 +0200 | From | Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <> | Subject | Re: Broadcom BCM4306/BCM2050 support |
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David S. Miller wrote: > On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 23:16, Martin List-Petersen wrote: > >>>I couldn't find any Linux support for these WLAN chips with >>>google or on this lists archives. So I would like to ask it here: >> >>It seems, that the specs haven't been released yet. There are quite a few Wlan >>cards out there based on the Broadcom chips (nearly all cards, that support >>802.11g), so it's quite a shame. (Actually this fits the the TrueMobile 1180, >>1300 and 1400, speaking of Dell wireless lan cards). > > ... > >>The same problem is with the Intel Prowireless 2100 (Centrino) WLan card. No >>Linux support available yet, which is another choice for the Dell notebooks at >>the moment. > > > Don't expect specs or opensource drivers for any of these pieces > of hardware until these vendors figure out a way to hide the frequency > programming interface. > > Ie. these cards can be programmed to transmit at any frequency, > and various government agencies don't like it when f.e. users can > transmit on military frequencies and stuff like that.
Cool.
> The only halfway plausible idea I've seen is to not document the > frequency programming registers, and users get a "region" key file that > has opaque register values to program into the appropriate registers. > The file is per-region (one for US, Germany, etc.)and the wireless > kernel driver reads in this file to do the frequency programming. > > So don't blame the vendors on this one, several of them would love > to publish drivers public for their cards, but simply cannot with > upsetting federal regulators.
/me wants binary only driver for these cards to build opensource driver with ability to set "interesting" frequency range.
Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/
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