Does FBSD 7 support 802.11N cards? G suggestions?

[Walter]

(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>.
Did you mean 29 Advanced Networking 
<http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/advanced-networking.html>, 
and 29.3 Wireless Networking 
<http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-wireless.html>?
Or http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.0R/hardware.html#ETHERNET

>>If "N" isn't supported, is there any problem anyone knows about
>>with the LevelOne WNC0301 or with LinkSys WMP54G cards?
>>CircuitCity has the LevelOne for $25 and the WMP54G for $39.
>>Can someone advise me?
>>    
>>
>
>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.
>
>Roland
>  
>
It's a crap shoot?  Yikes.  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.  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.)  Later I'll work
on getting the driver downloaded and unpacked on my
Windows machine (as my Mac won't process those .exe
files).

Did I read that there's a way to use Windows drivers in FBSD 7?
There are places I can download those for XP/Vista, so if I could
use those - even if they're not the optimal solution - it'll get me
going.

Thanks for your reply.

Walter