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Date:      Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:33:17 -0400
From:      Brandon Falk <bfalk_bsd@brandonfa.lk>
To:        "Chris.H" <bsd.chris@yahoo.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Reverse engineering; How to...
Message-ID:  <4F73758D.3040000@brandonfa.lk>
In-Reply-To: <942975b7-aa54-416d-b049-a50563bbf2a7@email.android.com>
References:  <942975b7-aa54-416d-b049-a50563bbf2a7@email.android.com>

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Reverse engineering a whole driver could take a very long time, even with the
proper tools. If it's possible, return the adapter, and buy a new one and verify
that the chipset is supported before you buy it. Last time I bought a wireless
card I sat in the store looking at the Wireless support list for BSD before buying.

http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/CURRENT/hardware/support.html#WLAN

I very strongly suggest that you get a card with an Atheros chipset, as those
are by far the best supported on BSD.

-Brandon

On 3/28/2012 4:22 PM, Chris.H wrote:
> Greetings,
>  Over the past year, in an effort to convert my server farm to wireless, I've purchased some half a dozen USB wireless dongles, at a total cost of ~150.00. Unfortunately, none of them are (yet) supported — I know, I know, I've already had this debate with both dev's, & users. On the up-side, I've devised a resource that will greatly assist would-be adopters in selecting, and researching these, and other adapters _currently supported_ under under FreeBSD. That said; the adapter I most recently purchased, is quite nice (Cisco(Linksys) AE2500 Wireless-N).
> Boasts 2.5/5GHz @300Mbps. I figured (wrongly) because Linksys is so well supported on FreeBSD, that the likelihood of this being supported would be good. At any rate, given it's not, and because I _do_ have the Window$ drivers on the install CD. What are the possibilities I can reverse-engineer the drivers into a FreeBSD loadable module?
> I can unpack the setup file to extract the .sys files. While I _could_ utilize the ndisulator to load them, that's not my goal. Should I unpack the .sys file, and attempt to decompile/disassemble it? Or attempt to load it, and dump it from memory?
> — hacker/cracker advice _strongly_ desired —
>
> ##############
> #usbconfig -d ugen1.2 dump_device_desc
> ugen1.2: <Linksys AE2500 Cisco> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON
> bLength = 0x0012
> bDescriptorType = 0x0001
> bcdUSB = 0x0200
> bDeviceClass = 0x00ff
> bDeviceSubClass = 0x0000
> bDeviceProtocol = 0x0000
> bMaxPacketSize0 = 0x0040
> idVendor = 0x13b1
> idProduct = 0x003a
> bcdDevice = 0x0001
> iManufacturer = 0x0001 <Cisco>
> iProduct = 0x0002 <Linksys AE2500>
> iSerialNumber = 0x0003 <000000000001>
> bNumConfigurations = 0x0001
> ##############
>
> P.S. This message was sent from my "smart phone".
> Apologies for any (mis)formatting. :-(
>
> --Chris.H
>




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