WLAN w/ RealTek chips?
Gerhard Sittig <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.os.freebsd.devel.mobile |
|---|---|
| Organization | System Defenestrators Inc. |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Browsing through the newly released German c't magazine I noticed a rather cheap offer for PCMCIA WLAN cards (EUR 25,-). The "spec" in the commercial and on the website reads like a generic WiFi product (802.11b, 2.4GHz, 128bit WEP, 1/2/5.5/11 MBit). But the "RealTek chipset" mentioned makes me stop and wonder. What are the chances of FreeBSD support for these cards? `grep -r -i realtek src/share/man/man4` in a -CURRENT sandbox (cvs up'ed last Thursday) only pointed to the ethernet drivers (RealTek 8029 in ed.4, RTL 8002 in rdp.4, and RealTek 8129/8139 and MPX5030 clones in rl.4). `grep -r -i realtek src/sys/dev` only hits on ed/if_ed_pci.c (RTL8029), mii/miidevs (PHYs), mii/rlphy.c (the RealTek PHY), sound/pcm/ac97.c (huh, RealTek produces AC'97 codecs?), and usb/if_axe.c (USB ethernet). Reading the wlan driver manpages does not hint me any further. FYI, here are the revisions of the manpages I read: $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/an.4,v 1.17 2003/02/24 02:20:20 trhodes Exp $ $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/awi.4,v 1.12 2003/02/15 17:12:53 trhodes Exp $ $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/wi.4,v 1.42 2003/04/10 17:04:03 shiba Exp $ $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/man4.i386/ray.4,v 1.9 2002/01/21 12:36:12 mpp Exp $ For those interested: visit http://www.innet24.de/ and follow the Netzwerk -> Wireless -> "ALL0182 Wireless PCMCIA Adapter" route. Yes, ALLNET is a local OEM vendor, so the label doesn't mean too much. But I'm quite satisfied with what I've seen from them so far (NICs and switches). And I still some kind of hope that the "RealTek" is just a typo -- but the price is not the same as for Prism2/2.5/3 cards so this could/must really be some newer/cheaper/different chipset. Hmmm ... BTW do I not know how to read the pile of words at the "ALL0272 Wireless 54 Mbit PCMCIA Adapter" description (54MBit/s with Intersil chips?). And the "ALL0192 Wireless PCMCIA Adapter V.3.0" seems to be the Prism3 card. http://www.allnet.de/ isn't too informative either. virtually yours 82D1 9B9C 01DC 4FB4 D7B4 61BE 3F49 4F77 72DE DA76 Gerhard Sittig true | mail -s "get gpg key" [email protected] -- If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above ask your parents or an adult to help you. _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-mobile To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[email protected]"