Clamshell iBook Airport and if_wi.ko

[Joshua Krämer]

Dear list,

I'm trying to connect my Clamshell iBook, on which I have freshly
installed FreeBSD 10.0-Release, with my wireless network at home.  For
testing purposes, I have disabled encryption (WPA).  The wifi card is
the original Apple Airport (not the Extreme edition).

In /boot/loader.conf, I have added:

if_wi_load="YES"

And this is my /etc/rc.conf:

hostname="Klapprechner2"
keymap="german.ibook.kbd"
dumpdev="NO"

Now  this is what I have tried:

# ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev wi0 up
wlan0: Ethernet address: 00:10:...
# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu
  1500
    ether 00:10:...
    inet6 fe80::210:c6ff:fe6a:78ff%wlan0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet DS/11Mbps mode 11b
    status: associated
    ssid "" channel 0 (0 MHz) bssid 00:10:...
    country US authmode OPEN privacy OFF txpower 0 bmiss 7 ucastrate 0
    mcastrate 0 mgmtrate 0 maxretry 0 scanvalid 60 bintval 0
# ifconfig wlan0 scan
#

So, scan doesn't seem to work (there are several networks in reach).

In the router's web interface, at this point the iBook is detected and
listed as follows (no IP address):

signal strength = 100%
device = PC-00-10-...
IP address = -
MAC address = 00:10:...
transfer rate = 0 Mbit/s
properties = unencrypted

Then, I have issued:

# ifconfig wlan0 ssid MYSSID
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu
  1500
    ether 00:10:...
    inet6 fe80::210:c6ff:fe6a:78ff%wlan0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (autoselect)
    status: no carrier
    ssid MYSSID channel 3 (2422 MHz 11b)
    country US authmode OPEN privacy OFF txpower 0 bmiss 7 scanvalid 60
    bintval 0

The listing of my computer in the router's interface is still the same.

# dhclient wlan0
wlan0: no link ............... giving up

I have transfered everything by hand, so I can't rule out typos, and I
have shortened the MAC address (00:10:...)

My impression is that the if_wi module doesn't work.  I wonder if it is
possible to use the Airport on FreeBSD 10 (it works in MacOS 9).

I have downloaded the 10.0-stable src.txz and rebuilt the if_wi module,
but I can't load it, it complains about kernel version mismatch.  Is
there a way to update FreeBSD 10 on ppc with binaries?  I couldn't find
any FreeBSD 10 ppc packages on the FTP server.  It would need a very
long time to build everything on this machine from the sources (it runs
at 300 MHz).

Thanks in advance for hints or suggestions.

Kind regards,
Joshua Krämer