if_wpi is all kinds of broken

Dominic Fandrey kamikaze at bsdforen.de
Mon May 17 14:03:01 UTC 2010


On 17/05/2010 15:44, Tom Evans wrote:
> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Jan Henrik Sylvester <me at janh.de> wrote:
>> On 01/-10/63 19:59, Dominic Fandrey wrote:
>>>
>>> The if_wpi driver is all kinds of broken. The reported problems
>>
>> I have had trouble with all Intel drivers, ipw, iwi, wpi, and iwn. (As an
>> exception, recently, iwn was very stable on 8-STABLE.) For most notebooks, I
>> bought Atheros based MiniPCI(e) cards and everything was fine.
>>
>>> Where do I have to put my cash to make somebody fix this?
>>
>> 5 to 10 Euros on Ebay including shipping. Initially, I was hesitant, too,
>> because I wanted the hardware I already got to work, but eventually I
>> decided that it is not worse it. ath simply works. (I have had wi, ral,
>> ural, rum, and zyd, too. Over the years, nothing was as unproblematic as
>> ath.)
>>
>> For most notebooks, the wireless MiniPCI(e) card is very easy to replace.
> 
> Note that not all laptops will play nicely with different wifi cards.
> My old HP laptop would not boot up past the BIOS if you replaced the
> wifi card with one not in its magic list, which I found out after I
> had bought an ath based mini pci-e card to replace it (which is still
> spare if anyone wants it).

Thanks for that information. I know that the if_wpi driver does some stuff
with the bluetooth hardware (I think the bluetooth hardware is part of the
wpi hardware) and the BIOS allows some pretty dedicated settings.

It really might all blow up if I exchange the hardware. I'll have to give
it a try, though. I think I still have an old ipw lying around somewhere
(from a broken Thinkpad), if this works I might consider buying ath.

Regards

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