Does FBSD 7 support 802.11N cards? G suggestions?

[Roland Smith]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 06:54:53AM -0500, Walter wrote:
> (Sorry Roland; re-sending after I noticed my reply went directly
> to you rather than the List.)
> 
> Roland Smith wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 12:23:44PM -0500, Walter wrote:
>>  
>>> <>I'm trying to get a Broadcom-based wireless-N card running
>>> under FBSD 7. ...
>> 
> > See Chapter 20 of the FreeBSD handbook, especially §20.2.
> 
> 20 is The Vinum Volume Manager 
> <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/vinum-vinum.html>.

I'm talking about "The Cutting Edge" 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cutting-edge.html

>> The problem is that a lot of wireless manufacturers have the habit of
>> changing wireless chipsets without changing model numbers. So a revision
>> X might work while revision Y won't.
>> 
>> Try and look at the card. Sometimes the chipset is visible and you can
>> look for it in the manual pages. But often it is enclosed in a metal cover.
>> 
>> In my experience, asking shop clerks which chipset a card uses only
>> produces puzzled looks.
>> 
>> Second best thing is to download the driver for the revision of the card
>> that you want to buy. Unpack the driver and read the .inf files. That
>> will probably yield the chipset type. If not, use strings(1) on the
>> drivers themselves.

> It's a crap shoot?  

That's about the size of it.

> Yikes. 

Indeed.

> I guess I'll just pick one and take
> my chances, but - no fault to FBSD - it appears to be a sorry
> state of affairs in the computer driver arena. 

More and more chipsets are being supported on BSD, with OpenBSD leading
the way. But it remains difficult to see which chipset is used in a
card. Manufacturers hardly ever list it in their docs.

> I can guess
> the latest rev listed on the support web site is what I'll get
> when I buy the box?? (Maybe not, as I got a rev A router
> last December when the latest was rev B.) 

Usually there is a sticker on the packaging that says "model FOO
rev. X". or something like that.

> Later I'll work
> on getting the driver downloaded and unpacked on my
> Windows machine (as my Mac won't process those .exe
> files).

You could try unzip. Some of those exe files are self-extracting ZIP ziles.

> Did I read that there's a way to use Windows drivers in FBSD 7?

Yes. It's called ndis(4). Only works on i386 architecture though, not amd64.

Do realize that you're sticking a piece of windows software of unknown
quality in your _kernel_.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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