Broadcom BCM4306/BCM2050 support

It seems, that the specs haven't been released yet. There are quite a few Wlan cards out there based on the Broadcom chips (nearly all cards, that support 802.11g), so it's quite a shame. (Actually this fits the the TrueMobile 1180, 1300 and 1400, speaking of Dell wireless lan cards).

The same problem is with the Intel Prowireless 2100 (Centrino) WLan card. No Linux support available yet, which is another choice for the Dell notebooks at the moment.

The ethernet chip is supported both by the BCM5700 and the Tigon3 drivers. It's basically the same chipset family, that Dell has used in their servers for quite a while and since these are delivered with Linux of the factory, the driver has been around for quite a while.

Not so far. There is a petition here on exactly that issue:
http://www.petitiononline.com/BCM4301/petition.html

Dell won't be able to help you at the moment, since Linux on notebooks is supported on a "best effort" basis, but not delivered with the notebooks of factory. So no demand for drivers here.

I've tried to contact Broadcom directly, but they are just ignoring mails containing the word "Linux", so it seems.

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only take a bath ...

...

Don't expect specs or opensource drivers for any of these pieces of hardware until these vendors figure out a way to hide the frequency programming interface.

Ie. these cards can be programmed to transmit at any frequency, and various government agencies don't like it when f.e. users can transmit on military frequencies and stuff like that.

The only halfway plausible idea I've seen is to not document the frequency programming registers, and users get a "region" key file that has opaque register values to program into the appropriate registers. The file is per-region (one for US, Germany, etc.)and the wireless kernel driver reads in this file to do the frequency programming.

So don't blame the vendors on this one, several of them would love to publish drivers public for their cards, but simply cannot with upsetting federal regulators.

David S. Miller <[email protected]>

Cool.

/me wants binary only driver for these cards to build opensource driver with ability to set "interesting" frequency range.

Carl-Daniel

http://www.hailfinger.org/

Citat Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <[email protected]>:

It's there for Windows :) So ...

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
last|perl -pe '$_ x=/(..:..)...(.*)/&&"''"ge&&"''"lt' That's gonna be tough for Randal to beat... :-)

             -- Larry Wall in  <[email protected]>

Well, there are guys that are able to change this frequency without open documentation - so it is just not good argument.
I will rather say that this is misdesign - allowing to do more than is allowed....

Grzegorz Jaskiewicz <[email protected]>
K4 Labs

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no FCC regulation prohibiting one from receiving some particular frequency. There is, however, a federal law prohibiting the disclosure of a radio message by a third party. This means that the media, or even law enforcement can't listen to a private radio (cell phone) conversation and then disclose its content. At one time, cell phones used FM at 960 MHz. This could be readily received by receivers designed for Amateur Radio use. For a time, the FCC refused to Type Approve receivers that cover these frequencies. However, most Hams know how to fix their receivers so they can receive whatever they want and Type Approval was only required for receivers that were designed to be sold. You could build anything you want for yourself. This refusal to Type Approve receivers was a trick to make the usual receiver owner think that there was some dumb regulation when, in fact, under the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended), there can't be such a regulation without creating a new public law, which hasn't happened and probably will not.

Recently, some broadcast satellite companies have tried to get the FCC to declare that their transmissions are private and unauthorized reception should be unlawful. The FCC has continually postponed any such declaration because, if once broadcast, a radio signal doesn't become public, then anybody could sue every radio transmitter operator to prevent the trespass of "their" signals onto private property. You can't have it both ways, either radio signals are public and, therefore cannot commit a trespass, or they are private and can.

But, unlike some other countries regulators, the FCC has steadfastly refused to allow broadcasters, even satellite broadcasters, to pursue such extortion. Basically, once a signal leaves an antenna, it becomes public property.

The same is not true for cable and "guided waves". Satellite broadcasters have not been able to convince the FCC that their transmissions are "guided waves". However, some private RF link companies signals, including some that use satellites, are considered "guided waves" and cannot be used without permission.

Various commercial interests have convinced governments of many other countries that they "own" their radio signals and therefore different regulations exist in many other countries. In the UK, for instance, one has to purchase a license to use a receiver (you know, some Sony Walkman). This is, in my opinion, extremely repressive. It would be nice for somebody to start suing the BBC (and others) to recover damages for the criminal trespass of "their" radio signals onto private property. After a few such lawsuits, the ownership of such broadcast signals would revert to the public, just like in the US.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.

Contrary to popular opinion, not everybody lives in the US. Here in Germany, receiving some particular frequencies (e.g. those used by the police) was prohibited a few years ago (I don't know exactly if they changed the law). The argument was that some receiver types emitted a weak signal on the frequency they were listening to (and could be tuned to become a private radio station) which could interfere with the low-power police devices. However, it was simply not sensible to prohibit all radios, so they were constained to a specific frequency range.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

http://www.hailfinger.org/

Wrong. You need a license to receive terrestrial TV but that is rather different and relates to both cultural and historical tax differences in philosophy between the US and UK.

The big problem with 'soft' radios is transmit. You can hotwire your centrino. People in the UK are already trying to use US drivers in Windows XP because "they go further". If you listen to police transmissions then its ultimately poor police security, if you transmit on their frequency then its a lot more serious because you might interfere with emergency services.

Alan

Nevermind the fact that you can arm yourself with an electronics book, walk into radio shack, and with a couple hours of work have a
pretty powerful jammer on the order of a few watts. Compared to the
30mW of a typical wireless card (and no amount of soft-radioing will change that..)

If you're out to cause malice, you don't need to hotwire your spiffy new centrino.

- Pizza [preaching to the choir, I know...]

Solomon Peachy                                   pizza@f*cktheusers.org
                                                           ICQ #1318444
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur                 Melbourne, FL

People are already cracking the windows interfaces on them

I talked to one vendor about this stuff and fingers crossed we will see open drivers except for the radio module. In the longer term I suspect vendors will move to signed register sets, so you can load "US 802.11g" but you can't load "police frequency, full power"

And non US ones too. The fact people are already abusing the technology suggests that they will be forced to go the crypted settings route for next generation hardware anyway.

Alan