Wireless networking question

[Kevin Kinsey]

Chip Camden wrote:
> On Apr 25 2010 16:18, Chip Camden wrote:
>> On Apr 25 2010 21:26, S Roberts wrote:
>>> Hmmm.., you sure your ports system is installed / up-to-date there?
>>>
>>> Do you have any of the docs that would have shipped with the notebook?
>>> If not, I searched ASUS, and found a link to the English version manual
>>> here:
>>> http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&product=3&model=K72F&type=map&f_type=19
>>>
>>> I've not downloaded it, so please see if there's anything that can
>>> assist. There **are** other resources at the ASUS site - you just have
>>> to use the menu on the right to select your particular model and review
>>> the list of resources that gets returned..,
>>>
>> Thanks for the attempt to help, but ports are up-to-date.  I'm on
>> 8.0-RELEASE amd64 -- maybe scanpci isn't available on amd64?

Let me preface my commentary with "I'm way out of my league", so #include
disclaimer.h and all that ...

For starters, in re: above, didn't someone suggest "libpciaccess" as the
source for "scanpci"?  I can't tell if you are misunderstanding what S
Roberts suggested, or I am misunderstanding what you are responding.

I'm pretty sure there's some misunderstanding here, though.

>> The download for the manual is exactly the same as the paper manual that
>> came with the notebook.  It gives very little technical information.  On
>> the web site, all I could find is that it's 802.11n capable, which I
>> already knew from the sales pamphlet.
> 
> OK -- searching the ASUS site for Windows 7 64bit docs (that's what came
> on it), I find three possibilities for the wireless device:
> 
> 1. Intel 1000
> 2. Intel 6200
> 3. Azurewave
> 
> Looks like both of the first two are addressed by driver iwn on OpenBSD,
> but not on FreeBSD.  The third one I don't see anywhere.  Looking here:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_wireless_drivers#FreeBSD
> 
> Looks like that page was last updated for FreeBSD on April 25.
> In any case, I tried iwn, and that doesn't work.

I thought we had pciconf output that stated it was an Atheros chipset?
In that case, it would be the Azurewave, right?  I'd suspect it might
be supported under ath(4), but you'd wanna read the manpage and possibly
even the source for any kind of confirmation on that; the manpage does
specifically say that adapters based on the AR5005VL aren't supported.
However, the manpage might be slightly out-of-date, also.

The other thing I recall seeing is that a new variant of a supported
chipset comes out, and the driver code doesn't recognize it even though
it might work well.  Used to be something like a VENDOR_ID string in
the source files; I don't know if it's still the case, but if it was,
some people have been able to hack their own device support in rare
cases simply by adding the new info to the driver file and recompiling
it, but you'd want someone with a lot more $OS_foo than I have to help
out with that (or tell you if it's even possible).  This is open-source
stuff; you might even get sam@ 's attention and get help from the writer
himself if you're wearing your lucky sneakers.

Kevin Kinsey