Re: Broadcom BCM4306/BCM2050 support

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.kernel.2003@gmx.net>]

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/