I recently purchased a Netgear WG311 card based on the fact that the manpage for ath(4) says it is a supported card. As it turns out, at least version 2 (the version I had) of this card is not supported - it appears to be based on a Texas Instruments chipset that it not supported by anything other than Windows. I was able to use the card with the ndis wrapper, however it didn't work very well; console messages stated that the driver was buggy and in fact my system would panic randomly with the driver loaded. I returned the card this afternoon and swapped it out for another card, a D-Link DWL-G520. While this particular model number is not listed on the ath(4) manpage, it is listed as a supported ath(4) device on the 5.3-RELEASE hardware notes for i386. Also, it is listed at the atheros webpage linked from that same document. However, at least revision B3 of this card ALSO is not supported by the ath driver. I get the following error message when I try to load the driver: ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xd0000000-0xd000ffff irq 16 at device 6.0 on pci5 ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13 device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6 I am able to use this card via the ndis wrapper, however I get numerous console messages like these (I renamed the device ath with ndiscvt): ath0: set filter failed: 45 ath0: couldn't change DS config to 2417000kHz: 19 NDIS: open file /compat/ndis/regAdd.txt failed: 2 I fixed the latter by touching the file. I have no idea what it is supposed to do - there is no file by that name on the CD that came with the card and I am not sure what it is for. Interestingly, the DWL-G520 is supposed to be an 802.11b/g part only however the NDIS driver 'detects' 802.11a modes. Also the NDIS driver does not detect the 108Mbps 'Super' mode that the card advertises on the box. Thankfully, no panics yet with the D-Link card and the NDIS driver. Does anyone have a suggestion for a PCI wireless card that is natively supported by FreeBSD? -Will -- Will Saxon Systems Programmer, Network Services University of Florida Department of Housing Phone: (352) 392-2171 x10148 Email: wills@housing.ufl.edu
I have had some degree of success with the Netgear WG311T (note the T on the end -- this is a very different beast from the humble WG311). I've brought it up a couple of times at a ridiculously slow speed (1Mb/s), then changed some setting to try to get a faster connection, forgot what I changed, and haven't been able to bring it up since. But I *have* had it up using the ath driver. Once or twice. Slowly. I mostly use that machine for gaming, so rarely boot it to freebsd, so haven't had much motivation to try again since. FWIW, at the time it was running 5.3-RELEASE. On 4/27/05, Will Saxon <WillS@housing.ufl.edu> wrote:> I recently purchased a Netgear WG311 card based on the fact that the > manpage for ath(4) says it is a supported card. As it turns out, at > least version 2 (the version I had) of this card is not supported - it > appears to be based on a Texas Instruments chipset that it not > supported by anything other than Windows. I was able to use the card > with the ndis wrapper, however it didn't work very well; console > messages stated that the driver was buggy and in fact my system would > panic randomly with the driver loaded. > > I returned the card this afternoon and swapped it out for another > card, a D-Link DWL-G520. While this particular model number is not > listed on the ath(4) manpage, it is listed as a supported ath(4) > device on the 5.3-RELEASE hardware notes for i386. Also, it is listed > at the atheros webpage linked from that same document. However, at > least revision B3 of this card ALSO is not supported by the ath > driver. I get the following error message when I try to load the > driver: > > ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xd0000000-0xd000ffff irq 16 at device 6.0 on pci5 > ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13 > device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6 > > I am able to use this card via the ndis wrapper, however I get > numerous console messages like these (I renamed the device ath with > ndiscvt): > > ath0: set filter failed: 45 > ath0: couldn't change DS config to 2417000kHz: 19 > NDIS: open file /compat/ndis/regAdd.txt failed: 2 > > I fixed the latter by touching the file. I have no idea what it is > supposed to do - there is no file by that name on the CD that came > with the card and I am not sure what it is for. > > Interestingly, the DWL-G520 is supposed to be an 802.11b/g part only > however the NDIS driver 'detects' 802.11a modes. Also the NDIS driver > does not detect the 108Mbps 'Super' mode that the card advertises on > the box. > > Thankfully, no panics yet with the D-Link card and the NDIS driver. > > Does anyone have a suggestion for a PCI wireless card that is > natively supported by FreeBSD? > > -Will > > -- > Will Saxon > Systems Programmer, Network Services > University of Florida Department of Housing > Phone: (352) 392-2171 x10148 > Email: wills@housing.ufl.edu > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
Will Saxon wrote:> I recently purchased a Netgear WG311 card based on the fact that the > manpage for ath(4) says it is a supported card. As it turns out, at > least version 2 (the version I had) of this card is not supported - it > appears to be based on a Texas Instruments chipset that it not > supported by anything other than Windows. I was able to use the card > with the ndis wrapper, however it didn't work very well; console > messages stated that the driver was buggy and in fact my system would > panic randomly with the driver loaded. > > I returned the card this afternoon and swapped it out for another > card, a D-Link DWL-G520. While this particular model number is not > listed on the ath(4) manpage, it is listed as a supported ath(4) > device on the 5.3-RELEASE hardware notes for i386. Also, it is listed > at the atheros webpage linked from that same document. However, at > least revision B3 of this card ALSO is not supported by the ath > driver. I get the following error message when I try to load the > driver: > > ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xd0000000-0xd000ffff irq 16 at device 6.0 on pci5 > ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13 > device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6 > > I am able to use this card via the ndis wrapper, however I get > numerous console messages like these (I renamed the device ath with > ndiscvt): > > ath0: set filter failed: 45 > ath0: couldn't change DS config to 2417000kHz: 19 > NDIS: open file /compat/ndis/regAdd.txt failed: 2 > > I fixed the latter by touching the file. I have no idea what it is > supposed to do - there is no file by that name on the CD that came > with the card and I am not sure what it is for. > > Interestingly, the DWL-G520 is supposed to be an 802.11b/g part only > however the NDIS driver 'detects' 802.11a modes. Also the NDIS driver > does not detect the 108Mbps 'Super' mode that the card advertises on > the box. > > Thankfully, no panics yet with the D-Link card and the NDIS driver. > > Does anyone have a suggestion for a PCI wireless card that is > natively supported by FreeBSD?5.3 has noticeably older ath support than -current. I've been unable to update 5.x with all the 6.x code because it breaks API's that are frozen for the life of 5.x. I'm considering backporting some of the driver-specific 6.x support to 5.x so the same cards are supported but that's a lot of work and won't happen until this summer. Sam