Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 10:59:08 -0700 (MST) From: "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com> To: sam@errno.com Cc: kip.macy@gmail.com, pbowen@fastmail.fm, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: WiFi driver companies Message-ID: <20070125.105908.1120073565.imp@bsdimp.com> In-Reply-To: <45B79D53.5080503@errno.com> References: <45B74A72.9080108@fastmail.fm> <b1fa29170701240811t6668ce1i7e78948901f9f433@mail.gmail.com> <45B79D53.5080503@errno.com>
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In message: <45B79D53.5080503@errno.com>
Sam Leffler <sam@errno.com> writes:
: Kip Macy wrote:
: > It has frequently been mentioned that Ralink is open. However, I have
: > no vendor contact information so I cannot confirm that. For
: > maintaining and extending the ralink drivers I rely on the linux
: > driver put out by ralink as a reference. The atheros driver is
: > extremely well supported, and for the foreseeable future will continue
: > to be your best choice when using freebsd. To the best of my
: > knowledege the only chipset which has publicly available documentation
: > is the Prism II with Intersil firmware - which is supported by wi(4)
: > (which I wish everyone would throwaway so I could stop throwing
: > band-aid after band-aid at it and spend the time adding 11n support).
:
: FWIW the Prism docs were never public; they were just so widely
: circulated under the table that it just seemed like that :)
There was a time that one could get access to them fairly easily.
You'd download an NDA that said "I won't give copies of this to
anybody, but open source drivers are OK," sign it, fax it back and get
an access code for the web site. While not, strictly speaking,
public, there was a well beaten path for obtaining it. When Intersil
sold off the Prism chips, this went away with the new owners, at least
initially. I tried a few times after the sale to get updated docs to
no avail and then gave up.
Warner
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