Hello all,
My question is, are there any wireless NICs that don't require a firmware to be loaded into them to work ?
I was planning to boot off a wireless NIC through PXE. Is it possible ??
Thank you for your time..
--
thanks and regards,
balaji rao
On Tuesday 25 March 2008, John W. Linville wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 12:11:28AM +0530, Balaji Rao wrote:
>
> > My question is, are there any wireless NICs that don't require a firmware to be loaded into them to work ?
>
> There are some, although many of them are old: adm8211, airo, ath5k,
> rtl8180, rtl8187, and some of the rt2x00 devices.
For rt2x00 the following:
rt2400pci, rt2500pci and rt2500usb
> > I was planning to boot off a wireless NIC through PXE. Is it possible ??
>
> The gPXE (formerly etherboot) project seems to support PCI-based
> (e.g. cardbus, but not PCMCIA) orinoco devices. I cannot verify that,
> since I have no such device (donations accepted!)...
>
> Hth!
>
> John
On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:32:48PM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 15:32 -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
>
> > The gPXE (formerly etherboot) project seems to support PCI-based
> > (e.g. cardbus, but not PCMCIA) orinoco devices. I cannot verify that,
> > since I have no such device (donations accepted!)...
>
> Just to set the record straight, I'm unaware of any CardBus devices
> compatible with the orinoco driver, i.e. Prism 2-3, Symbol Trilogy or
> Hermes I based 802.11b device.
>
> At the first glance, gPXE appears to support Prism chipset only, either
> native PCI or PCMCIA behind PLX9052 bridge.
I'm not sure where you are looking. I have a git tree from here:
git://git.etherboot.org/scm/gpxe.git
The gpxe source file src/drivers/net/prism2_pci.c claims to support
PCI ID 1260:3873 which is listed as a prism 2.5 device supported by
drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.c in the linux tree. Similarly the
gpxe src/drivers/net/prism2_plx.c claims to support all of the PCI IDs
listed in drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_plx.c from the linux tree as
well as one that is not listed there (126c:8030 -- perhaps we should
add it?).
As I said, I do not have _any_ pci-based prism2-3 hardware (donations
welcome!), so I can not verify whether or not the gpxe code (or for
that matter the linux code) actually works -- YMMV. I'm just going
by what information I have.
John
--
John W. Linville
[email protected]
On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 11:58 -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:32:48PM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 15:32 -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
> >
> > > The gPXE (formerly etherboot) project seems to support PCI-based
> > > (e.g. cardbus, but not PCMCIA) orinoco devices. I cannot verify that,
> > > since I have no such device (donations accepted!)...
> >
> > Just to set the record straight, I'm unaware of any CardBus devices
> > compatible with the orinoco driver, i.e. Prism 2-3, Symbol Trilogy or
> > Hermes I based 802.11b device.
> >
> > At the first glance, gPXE appears to support Prism chipset only, either
> > native PCI or PCMCIA behind PLX9052 bridge.
>
> I'm not sure where you are looking. I have a git tree from here:
>
> git://git.etherboot.org/scm/gpxe.git
That's where I was looking.
> The gpxe source file src/drivers/net/prism2_pci.c claims to support
> PCI ID 1260:3873 which is listed as a prism 2.5 device supported by
> drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.c in the linux tree. Similarly the
> gpxe src/drivers/net/prism2_plx.c claims to support all of the PCI IDs
> listed in drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_plx.c from the linux tree as
> well as one that is not listed there (126c:8030 -- perhaps we should
> add it?).
126c:8030 is in orinoco_nortel.c, and I don't think it can be treated
like plx9052 based bridges.
The code in prism2.c looks similar to linux-wlan-ng, which is
Prism-only. But on the other hand, the gpxe driver offers only very
basic functionality, which doesn't even include WEP, so it's possible
that non-Prism cards would work.
--
Regards,
Pavel Roskin
On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 15:32 -0400, John W. Linville wrote:
> The gPXE (formerly etherboot) project seems to support PCI-based
> (e.g. cardbus, but not PCMCIA) orinoco devices. I cannot verify that,
> since I have no such device (donations accepted!)...
Just to set the record straight, I'm unaware of any CardBus devices
compatible with the orinoco driver, i.e. Prism 2-3, Symbol Trilogy or
Hermes I based 802.11b device.
At the first glance, gPXE appears to support Prism chipset only, either
native PCI or PCMCIA behind PLX9052 bridge.
--
Regards,
Pavel Roskin
On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 12:11:28AM +0530, Balaji Rao wrote:
> My question is, are there any wireless NICs that don't require a firmware to be loaded into them to work ?
There are some, although many of them are old: adm8211, airo, ath5k,
rtl8180, rtl8187, and some of the rt2x00 devices.
> I was planning to boot off a wireless NIC through PXE. Is it possible ??
The gPXE (formerly etherboot) project seems to support PCI-based
(e.g. cardbus, but not PCMCIA) orinoco devices. I cannot verify that,
since I have no such device (donations accepted!)...
Hth!
John
--
John W. Linville
[email protected]