Wiki List of supported wifi devices

[Rich]

Hi coreplayer2
To check for firmware requests, one could use something like:

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dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -i firmwareThis will print out every line containing the word  firmware  plus the two lines leading up to and the five lines
right after it.
On the footnotes in the Wiki, might I suggest the following:
1. Change LSUSB and LSPCI to lowercase because Linux is case sensitive, and to be newbie friendly.
2. Change note 1 to   Use "lsusb" from command line (no quotes)
3. Change references for note 2 to 1
4. Change note 2 to   Use "lspci -nn" from command line (no quotes)
5. Change references for notes 5 and 6 to 2 (removing notes 5 and 6)
6. Change references for note 7 to 3
7. Change references for note 8 to 4
Notes 1 and 2 basically provide the same information and are redundant.
Same goes for 5 and 6. lspci -nn provides all the information that lspci does plus a little more.

[coreplayer2]

Thanks, well I've found that a driver calls for firmware by name which has never included the word firmware.   usually the line will read something like driver_name is opening generic_related_file_name etc etc   so is not consistent.

So far in my search have had to look for lines in dmesg with the expected file name and hope it leads to cfg8011 or a firmware file which normally ends in .bin,  but not all drivers have firmware as such these days? 


Thanks for the case sensitive suggestion, I hear you about the redundancy but without it the column header will not give any clue how to get that info so I included it anyhow..   

 

[Rich]

Hi coreplayer2
I'm afraid the only sample of a dmesg firmware request I had was for a sound card, and the message included the
phrase "firmware: requesting". This was under TC3.4 and the filename rquested ended in ".fw". Maybe the following
would be better:

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dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -i '.bin'
dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -i '.fw'

[Juanito]

Wireless NIC Chip = Broadcom Corporation BCM4312
USB ID =
PCI ID = 14e4:4315
OEM & Model as tested = Dell Latitude D430, Dell wireless mini-PCI 1395
HW rev = rev 01
Interface = PCI
WLAN standard [802.11] = 802.11b/g
Frequency Band = 2.4GHz
Security (1) = WPA2
Tested with kernel = 3.0.21-tinycore
Tested with Wifi.tcz = N
Required Extensions (2) = wpa_supplicant, user supplied firmware
Notes

Requires Broadcom firmware, see http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Device_firmware_installation
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4312 WLAN found (core revision 15)
Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMNL, Firmware-ID: FW13 ]
b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 508.1084 (2009-01-14 01:32:01)

Will also work with wl-modules-3.0.21-tinycore or ndiswrapper-modules-3.0.21-tinycore (with bcmwl5.{inf,sys}) using boot codes blacklist=bcma blacklist=b43 blacklist=ssb

Edit: I confirm this will work with wifi.tcz as long as the user supplied firmware is loaded first

[coreplayer2]

Thanks you Juanito,   am all over this..   

[coreplayer2]

Juanito am curious, will these extensions work (albeit perhaps not as efficiently) with your BCM4312 device?? 

wl-modules-3.0.21-tinycore  &
firmware-broadcom.tcz

or

Am I correct in saying there is a supported driver in 3.0.21-tinycore?  If so will it function with  firmware-broadcom.tcz ? 

or

is the only method available for this specific device to download the firmware from the link provided..?

Just curious..?


Thanks again for the info, have added the data

[vinnie]

what firmware I'm using? 

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tc@box:~$ dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -i firmware
PCI: MMCONFIG at [mem 0xe0000000-0xefffffff] reserved in ACPI motherboard resources
PCI: Using MMCONFIG for extended config space
[Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored
ACPI: EC: GPE = 0x1c, I/O: command/status = 0x66, data = 0x62
ACPI: No dock devices found.
HEST: Table not found.
PCI: Using host bridge windows from ACPI; if necessary, use "pci=nocrs" and report a bug
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (domain 0000 [bus 00-ff])


tc@box:~$ dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -i '.bin'
IP route cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 131072 bind 65536)
TCP reno registered
UDP hash table entries: 512 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
UDP-Lite hash table entries: 512 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
NET: Registered protocol family 1
RPC: Registered named UNIX socket transport module.


tc@box:~$ dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -i '.fw'
asus_wmi: Unknown symbol pci_hp_deregister (err 0)
asus_wmi: Unknown symbol __pci_hp_register (err 0)
Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 7.2, id: 0x1c0b1, caps: 0xd04733/0xa40000/0xa0000
usb 2-2: new low speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input6
input: Microsoft Microsoft�� Comfort Mouse 4500 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input7
generic-usb 0003:045E:076C.0001: input: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft�� Comfort Mouse 4500] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2/input0
usb 3-1: new low speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
tc@box:~$


[Juanito]

..will these extensions work (albeit perhaps not as efficiently) with your BCM4312 device?? 

wl-modules-3.0.21-tinycore  &
firmware-broadcom.tcz

wl-modules-3.0.21-tinycore will work without any additional firmware as long as the boot codes blacklist=bcma blacklist=b43 blacklist=ssb are used. Note that you will need "sudo modprobe wl" as it will not be automatically loaded.

firmware-broadcom will not work with this hardware

is the only method available for this specific device to download the firmware from the link provided..?

To work with the b43 module from wireless-3.0.21-tinycore, yes. It is not required for wl-modules-3.0.21-tinycore (the wl module provides the firmware) or ndiswrapper-modules-3.0.21-tinycore (the windows driver provides the firmware).

[Juanito]

Wireless NIC Chip = Broadcom Corporation BCM4331
USB ID =
PCI ID = 14e4:4331
OEM & Model as tested = Apple Inc. Macmini5,3
HW rev = rev 02
Interface = PCI
WLAN standard [802.11] = 802.11a/b/g/n
Frequency Band = 2.4 & 5GHz
Security (1) = WPA2
Tested with kernel = 3.0.21-tinycore64
Tested with Wifi.tcz = N
Required Extensions (2) = wpa_supplicant, user supplied firmware, compat-wireless-3.2.5-1
Notes

Requires Broadcom firmware, see http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Device_firmware_installation
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4331 WLAN found (core revision 29)
Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMNLS ]
b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)

Requires compat-wireless-3.2.5-1, see http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Download/stable/#compat-wireless_3.2_stable_releases

Will not work with wl-modules-3.0.21-tinycore, broadcom's driver <cough> does not support this hardware

Will not work with ndiswrapper-modules-3.0.21-tinycore, the windows driver requires a more recent version of ndis than that supplied by ndiswrapper

I am not sure if 802.11a or n or dual simultaneous n is supported by this version of compat-wireless - in any case, my wireless ap does not support 802.11a or dual simultaneous n

[Rich]

Hi coreplayer2
Looks like I provided some inadequate commands (again) , the grep syntax I provided ignores punctuation.
One more time

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dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -Fi '.bin'
dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -Fi '.fw' This of course presumes that the system knows to request  FILENAME.bin  before a firmware extension has been
installed. A sample  dmesg line when firmware is missing might be helpful, without that I'm just grepping at straws.
The Wiki page is coming together nicely by the way.

@vinnie: Not all cards require or use firmware.

[maro]

Rich, how about using an extended RE to merge your two fixed string matches into a single command:
    dmesg | grep -B 2 -A 5 -iE '\.(bin|fw)'
Please note that it uses '\.' to match the dot character, which is not an extended RE but rather part of the (standard) RE specifications.

[vinnie]

...
@vinnie: Not all cards require or use firmware.

then the package wireless-3.0.21-tinycore is useless in my case?

p.s. I added the new kernel version for my card in the table

[coreplayer2]

Vinnie, why don't you post the last 50 or so lines from the dmesg log then maybe we can tell.     Which extensions did you install to get wireless up and running?

[Rich]

Hi maro
Thanks. I don't spend enough time on the command line to be proficient with the fancy stuff, so I usually take a
simplistic approach. Lucky for me, you saw what I wrote, shook your head, and suggested a better way. 

[coreplayer2]

Thank you Juanito  is posted