RE: Broadcom BCM4306/BCM2050 support

[<bas.mevissen@hetnet.nl>]

David S. Miller wrote:

> 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.

What did Intersil do? How did the linux-wlan-ng project handle this?

> 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.

Here in The Netherlands, it is quite common to use a US version of Windows and to keep (most of)  the regional settings of the US. So on Windows, most of the time the region is likely to be wrong. I gues that in cases where things are critical, a different firmware version is used. 

It is not really a practical problem however, because the allowed frequencies have become pretty the same over time. The same applies to modems: they are also country-specific. But in practice, it is not really a concern.

But how to go furter with this? Does someone have contacts within Broadcom?

Regards,

Bas.



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