[conspire] "madwifi" is proprietary sludge (was: driver)

[Tim Utschig]

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 06:31:20PM -0700, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote:
> 
> BTW, I have never heard of a miniPCI Atheros card. I was assuming the
> "SuperG" in question was either CardBus or PCI. Not that it matters;
> they're all equally replaceable...
> 

I'm running a mini-PCI Atheros card in my work laptop.  I bought it off
eBay.  At least one model of LinuxCertified laptops also come with
optional mini-PCI Atheros cards in them, IIRC.

The laptop came with a Broadcom card, and at the time (6 months or so
ago), the bcm43xx driver was unusable for me under amd64 (no scan
results, and couldn't associate, I think).  I had a spare
ipw2200-compatible mini-PCI card, but ran into a few hard locks.  A
CardBus Atheros card I had worked fine, so I went to eBay for a mini-PCI
version.

I'm not sure what other options there are for mini-PCI wireless cards.

I bought an Intersil mini-PCI card off eBay hoping it would be supported
by the prism54 driver, but it turned out to be a "SoftMac" card
supported by the islsm driver.  I don't recall what the problem I had
with this card, but I ended up offering to donate it to the islsm
developers after reading in their FAQ that they didn't have any of them
to test with.  They were happy to receive the offer, but neither of the
developers that could have used it had a machine with a mini-PCI slot.

Alvin gave me a mini-PCI to PCI adapter, but I still need an antenna to
connect to one of the itty bitty U.FL connector.  Well, not anymore, I
just ordered one.  Thanks for indirectly reminding me.  Hopefully one of
the developers can still put it to good use.

-- 
   - Tim Utschig <tim at tetro.net>