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Date:      Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:24:46 +0200
From:      Maciej Milewski <milu@dat.pl>
To:        freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org
Cc:        Kevin Oberman <oberman@es.net>
Subject:   Re: Well supported wireless card for Lenovo T520
Message-ID:  <201106191624.46574.milu@dat.pl>
In-Reply-To: <4DFDE8A0.90208@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <20110618034432.634C01CC0B@ptavv.es.net> <4DFDE8A0.90208@FreeBSD.org>

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On Sunday 19 of June 2011 14:16:32 John Baldwin wrote:
> You might want to make sure that your laptop will accept a different
> wireless adapter.  I tried to replace the Broadcom WIFI adapter in an HP
> netbook and the system refused to POST with an Atheros WIFI adapter.
> Apparently the BIOS would check the PCI ID of the adapter and only
> booted if it was the Broadcom adapter.  (The message it output during
> POST actually said "restore valid WIFI nic" or some such.)  I resorted
> to using ndis(4) (though it looks like the Linux equivalent of bwn(4)
> supports my adapter now, so maybe someday I'll get to use bwn(4)).

In such case there are options to find a card which was made specific to 
manufacturer or find the patched bios(or do this by self but that may be very 
dangerous). I had such situation and went the whitelist way with my Lenovo 
laptop and I have no more problem with incompatible wireless(wwan and wlan) 
devices. The two computer manufacturers who are doing such security of their 
profit are HP and Lenovo. I don't know if others are doing that too.

Maciek



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