On 11/22/2009 11:47 AM, Przemek Kulczycki wrote: > Hi. > Is it possible to modify b43-fwcutter to extract firmware from the > Broadcom's STA driver? > http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php > > I'm asking about that because Canonical is distributing this driver as > part of the Ubuntu CDs, so it would be possible to have a working b43 > driver without having to download the firmware from the internet (the > paradox of requiring to have an internet connection to install a > network driver). > http://packages.ubuntu.com/source/karmic/bcmwl > http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/bcmwl-kernel-source > > Did anyone try to use the firmware from this driver in the b43 driver? > If not, would anyone be willing to try? > > As far as I understand, the License of this driver allows distribution > in unmodified form, so the package manager of any linux distro could > run b43-fwcutter on the STA driver and extract the firmware for use in > the b43 driver. > > What do you think about it? > Would that make sense? > Or are there any legal or technical obstacles that would block it? > > Does this driver differ that much from the one that is used currently > to extract the firmware? > http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o > http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
The setting up of fwcutter for a new driver requires knowing where the various sections that comprise the firmware. In the binary blob that accompanies this driver, which is where the firmware is located, all symbolic info has been stripped. As a result, it is impossible to know where the data is located. Yes, it diffs from either of the above drivers. One of them has V3 firmware and only works with b43legacy. The other has 410 firmware, which is older than the 478 firmware used by most people, and the 508 that I'm currently using. Larry Larry _______________________________________________ Bcm43xx-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev
