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Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:37:13 -0700
From: Sam Leffler <sam@errno.com>
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To: Reid Linnemann <lreid@a.cs.okstate.edu>
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Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org, cms01@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: Re: FreeBSD inquire
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Reid Linnemann wrote:
> Written by Richard on 09/12/06 10:41>>
>> it would seem freebsd doesn't support BCM4318 wireless card.
>> Rich
>>
>>
> 
> I find it highly unlikely that there is a FreeBSD (or Linux for that
> matter) driver for any broadcom wireless chips. The best (read: only)
> way to get a broadcom wifi chip running is to use an NDIS wrapper layer,
> as has been hinted. FreeBSD has a very complete NDIS wrapper layer
> available, and you can generate wrapped loadable driver modules for your
> kernel using the interactive ndisgen utility.

Linux folks reverse-engineered the bcm43xx driver and have a GPL driver
(added in 2.6.17 I believe).  There was an SoC proposal to port that
driver to freebsd but it did not get accepted.  I'd like to see support
for these parts 'cuz they appear frequently in laptops; often with bios
locking which makes swapping cards problematic.

	Sam