Ask not what Project Evil can do for you...

From: Bill Paul <wpaul_at_FreeBSD.ORG>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 10:29:03 -0800 (PST)
...ask what you can do for Project Evil!

Once again, Project Evil Laboratories has a new victim^Wsubject to
contend with: the Intel Centrino 2200BG 802.11b/g wireless card. This
is a companion to the Intel 2100 802.11b card, which already works with
the NDISulator. Unfortunately, the 2200BG does _not_ work: currently,
the card will be detected correctly but trying to ifconfig the interface
up leads to a panic. I suspect this has to do with calling the
ndis_ticktask() routine too soon after MiniportInitialize() routine
has completed, but I can't be sure what's going on since I don't have
a sample card to experiment with.

This is where _you_ can help. Yes, you. Over there. With the computer.
If you have one of these cards then Project Evil needs you! The only
way to really debug this problem is with console access to a machine
that has one of them (this is because one of the required tools is
the kernel debugger, DDB). This means one of two things:

1) If you have a laptop with one of these NICs and can somehow manage
   to set up a serial console, it would be nifty if you give me ssh
   access to it for a couple of hours. In theory, the presence of an
   actual wireless net is not required (I just need to make sure the
   interface comes up and doesn't crash). The laptop should be running
   FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE or later.

2) If you can bear to part with your NIC for a while, put it in a box
   and send it to Project Evil Laboratories:

	Attn: Bill Paul
	Wind River Systems
	500 Wind River Way
	Alameda, CA. 94501
	USA

Offers to help test stuff won't do me any good: I don't know where the
problem is yet, so I can't begin to suggest what to test.

Also, for those who have been wondering, this is where things stand
right now with Project Evil's wireless NIC support:

- Intel Centrino 2100 -- works
- Atheros 5212 cardbus (LinkSys WPC55AG) -- works
- Atheros 5211 miniPCI (IBM) -- works
- RealTek RTL8180 (with driver from RealTek website) -- works
- ADMtek ADM8211 (with driver from ADMtek webside) -- works
- AMD Am1771/1772 (with SMC 2602 v3 driver) -- works
- Broadcom 43xx cardbus/PCI/miniPCI -- works
- Cisco 340 PCMCIA card -- works
- InProcomm IPN2120 -- untested, but should work
- Intel PRO/5000 wireless (atheros chip) -- unknown, didn't work last
  I heard, don't have one
- Prism 54G -- doesn't work, don't have one, don't know where to get one
- 3Com 3C154G72 -- doesn't work, don't know what chip it is, don't have
  one, don't know where to get one
- Cisco 350MPI - doesn't work, might be getting one on loan soon

Note that there are a couple of badly designed laptops out there which
require the use of a Windows utility to enable the power and/or antenna
for their built-in wireless NICs. Supporting these is tricky since these
utilities are outside the scope of the NDIS spec. There exist some
Linux utilities for dealing with these laptops which can be ported to
FreeBSD without too much trouble (they just frob a couple of I/O ports).

Note that Project Evil would also appreciate loans/donations of cards
listed as "doesn't work" in the above list. :)

-Bill

--
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (510) 749-2329 | Senior Engineer, Master of Unix-Fu
                 wpaul_at_windriver.com | Wind River Systems
=============================================================================
              <adamw> you're just BEGGING to face the moose
=============================================================================
Received on Mon Mar 15 2004 - 09:29:03 UTC

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