linux-kernel - Re: [Madwifi-devel] ANNOUNCE: SFLC helps developers assess ar5k (enabling free Atheros HAL)

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Date:	Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:56:51 +0100 (CET)
From:	"Michael Renzmann" <madwifi@...pam.otaku42.de>
To:	"Jochen Friedrich" <jochen@...am.de>
Cc:	"Michael Buesch" <mb@...sch.de>,
	madwifi-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	"John W. Linville" <linville@...driver.com>,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org, lwn@....net
Subject: Re: [Madwifi-devel] ANNOUNCE: SFLC helps developers assess ar5k 
     (enabling free Atheros HAL)

Hi.

> At least, this way we have a chance to get USB working as well (See
> http://madwifi.org/ticket/33).

It's not the HAL that prevents MadWifi implementing USB support. Replacing
the binary-only HAL with OpenHAL and/or dissolving the HAL functionality
in the driver source does not get us any closer to a working support of
USB sticks.

Quoting Sam Leffler on that topic:

=== cut ===
The Atheros-based USB devices work rather differently from the
cardbus/pci cards.  In particular there is no hal; instead there's an
onboard processor that runs the hal and implements a special protocol.
This means you can reuse some of madwifi but you also (probably) need to
redo the code some to break out different interfaces.  It's not a simple
project.
=== cut ===

see: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.madwifi.user/5380

> OpenBSD seems to have a working driver (if_uath.c) for these USB WLAN
> sticks.

Which, at least for some sticks, requires a not freely distributable
binary firmware blob, by the way (see:
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/cvs/2006-09/0233.html ).
Nevertheless, it would be nice to have that driver ported to Linux.

Bye, Mike

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