On 01/05/12 07:01, Peter Harrison wrote:
On 4 Jan 2012, at 01:08, Da Rock wrote:
On 01/04/12 10:38, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2012, Da Rock wrote:
On 01/04/12 02:10, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2012, Da Rock wrote:
On 01/03/12 22:10, Jerry wrote:
On Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:44:30 +1000
Da Rock articulated:
On 01/03/12 11:15, Jeffrey McFadden wrote:
Don't ndis(4) ndiscvt and ndisgen(8) essentially accomplish what the OP is
requesting? See the handbook section 12.8.1.1:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config-network-setup.html
or the man page for ndiscvt:
http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=8&topic=ndiscvt
While doing the conversion looks a bit beyond what we would expect of an
end-user, it does seem to offer a path for using hardware whose manufacturer
does not support FreeBSD. Is there anything beyond licensing issues preventing
such drivers from being included in the distribution, or made downloadable in
FreeBSD form?
Oh yes, it is possible, just not probable :)
At
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ndiswrapper/index.php?title=Category:USB
almost 800 compatible devices are listed. Not everything, but I have found that
a willingness to spend a few dollars on a different card helps immensely in
enjoying FreeBSD and Linux. For me at least it is easier to find a compatible
card than to write a compatible driver.
Indeed :)
I did notice that the card in question wasn't on that list. But my own
experience with ndiswrapper and wifi cards were far less than satisfactory- the
firmware always got in the road. But I may have just been too stupid at the
time :)
I would also observe that most people involved with computers, whether as users
or developers, have little symphathy for people with different needs from the
device. This is a great impediment to progress. It is a mistake to assume that
because you don't need something, another person's desire for it is
illegitimate. In this case, I fully agree that it is an injustice that hardware
vendors do not supply FreeBSD drivers, but that does not mean that users
requiring such drivers are immoral or of poor character, and therefore to be
ignored or insulted. There is little that FreeBSD coders and users can do about
that injustice directly, however it is within their power to mitigate it with
the NDIS wrapper. If that wrapper allows another user to enter the FOSS world,
that will (in the fullness of time) contribute to reforming the vendor.
No they are absolutely not of poor character, I agree. Some messages can be
misconstrued, though, in that the replies can be terse and more logical than
sympathetic. Sometimes it is easier to replace with a different card than flog
a dead horse, although a user may take offense for emotional or financial
reasons more than logical.
Mitigation is a difficult path as I have found personally, although NDIS helps
immensely with wired nics (not so much of a problem these days), and I believe
Luigi Rizzo's work with the linuxulator and drivers is to be applauded ten
fold. It takes a great deal of time though- I put forward the idea when I was
still a BSD pup not entirely realising the challenges :) Luigi (and his
colleagues) has been working hard ever since to facilitate the more challenging
aspects of multimedia drivers (whether or not that had to do with my comments
or not, I don't know).
Da Rock,
I've been using ndis drivers successfully with a Broadcom chip in my Lenovo
s10-e since I bought it some years ago - to the extent that I've not yet
switched over to the native drivers now available.
I didn't find using ndisgen too problematic. Just a case of finding the right
driver files and following the manpage. I'd strongly recommend trying it in
preference to a usb stick (been there, done that) or buying new hardware -
although I'd agree that depending on the model changing a mini-PCI card isn't
necessarily that difficult (I changed it t an Intel card in my other Dell
laptop some time ago - remember to attach the internal aerial cable!).
Make no mistake I'm not being facetious. How did you do it?
The biggest problem I had was that there are multiple firmware for
different scenarios that are loaded. One for base station mode, one for
adhoc, and one more I think... They got in the way of using it correctly.
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