svn commit: r304506 - in head: . release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/hardware share/man/man4/man4.i386 sys/conf sys/dev/wl sys/i386/conf sys/modules sys/modules/wl targets/pseudo/userland tools/build/mk to...

[Warner Losh]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 8:33 AM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Friday, August 19, 2016 06:38:01 PM Warner Losh wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 4:27 PM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> > Author: jhb
>> > Date: Fri Aug 19 22:27:14 2016
>> > New Revision: 304506
>> > URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/304506
>> >
>> > Log:
>> >   Remove the wl(4) driver and wlconfig(8) utility.
>> >
>> >   The wl(4) driver supports pre-802.11 PCCard wireless adapters that
>> >   are slower than 802.11b.  They do not work with any of the 802.11
>> >   framework and the driver hasn't been reported to actually work in a
>> >   long time.
>>
>> s/PC Card/ISA/g
>>
>> There never were any PC Card wl cards. These cards were ISA only
>> and ran at up to 1Mbps.
>
> Wow, even worse than I thought.

In the days of 144kbps ISDN lines being the best you could get many places,
1Mbps was awesome. I had one for a 7 mile link to a friend's house in town
who had better connectivity.

Cards supported by the awi driver were 2Mbps and were the first 802.11
cards. wi blew that away with 10Mbps and a variety of suppliers...

wl lost its relevance in 2000 or so. wi was committed in 1999 for hardware
that had been around a couple of years in various forms. There was a fast
adaptation of it. I moved from my wl-based system to wi-based in 2000 or
so once I was able to get a ISA to PC Card adapter and the right connectors
to go from the funky tiny connectors on the WaveLan cards to the N connectors
that the rest of the gear was setup with. Heck, wi hasn't been all that relevant
since ath went into the tree with the boatload of features it supported and
way better features... And that's been since 2003 or 2004 or so.

Warner