[wireless-next][PATCH 0/3][ANNOUNCE] b43 the first Linux driver supporting HT-PHY (BCM4331)!

[Rafał Miłecki]

2011/8/27 James Anslow <james at jamesanslow.net>:
> On 27/08/11 11:22, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
>> 2011/8/27 James Anslow <james at jamesanslow.net>:
>>> On 26/08/11 19:41, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
>>>> After improving DMA (the important patch for BCM4331 is my one) we can finally
>>>> enable support for HT-PHY. The whole code has been written from MMIO dumps
>>>> grabbed from ndiswrapper+windows driver, but seems to be stable and was tested
>>>> by 3 people. Unfortunately there are still some missing conditions that can't
>>>> be fixed without RE the closed driver or having Broadcom co-operating. However
>>>> it seems we live with that well enough for basic usage :)
>>>>
>>>> BCM4331 doesn't have any Linux driver yet, both: wl and brcm80211 don't support
>>>> it. So we can be really proud of it ;) Ah, and I should mention that ndiswrapper
>>>> was frequently reported to lock up machines when working with this card (see
>>>> Ubuntu's forum about MacBook 8.1).
>>>>
>>>> To use b43 with BCM4331 you will need to grab the newest b43-fwcutter and
>>>> extract firmware from some recent closed source driver. See our wiki page in
>>>> few hours for nice howto.
>>>>
>>>> Big thanks go to David Woodhouse for providing me access to his MacBook, letting
>>>> grab the dumps, test patches and debugging a lot of hard cases with me (and
>>>> sometime without ;) ).
>>>>
>>>> Larry Finger (1):
>>>>   b43: Relax requirement for descriptors to be in the DMA zone
>>>>
>>>> Rafał Miłecki (2):
>>>>   b43: use 8K buffers for 64-bit DMA to workaround hardware bug
>>>>   b43: make HT-PHY support experimental
>>>>
>>>>  drivers/net/wireless/b43/Kconfig |    6 +++---
>>>>  drivers/net/wireless/b43/dma.c   |   31 ++++++++++++++++---------------
>>>>  drivers/net/wireless/b43/dma.h   |    3 ++-
>>>>  3 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)
>>>>
>>> I've checked the wiki page and downloads area but the latest version of
>>> fwcutter that I could find was from several days ago.
>>>
>>> Can anyone direct me towards the latest b43-fwcutter download as
>>> mentioned above?
>>>
>>> Can't wait to get 4331 support!
>> Just use the howto for kernel 3.2 (I know it's a little tricky for now
>> to use 3.2, wireless-next is also OK for that howto):
>> http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Other_distributions_not_mentioned_above
>>
>> You have to:
>> 1) Clone git repository wireless-next
>> 2) Apply 3 patches from this patchset
>> 3) Compile kernel with B43_PHY_HT
>> 4) Install firmware (I think you already started that part)
>>
>> b43-fwcutter in 015 version is alright for extracting 666.2 firmware.
>>
> Thanks for your support on this.
>
> I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to kernel development. However,
> I am eager to learn.
>
> I've cloned the repo and have wireless-next.
>
> Can you tell me where I will find these 3 patches to apply them to
> wireless-next?

You can find them on b43-dev ML archive. You can copy them and paste
into 3 separated text files.

However to make it easier to you, I've also uploaded them to http server:
http://files.zajec.net/enable-ht/0001-b43-Relax-requirement-for-descriptors-to-be-in-the-D.patch
http://files.zajec.net/enable-ht/0002-b43-use-8K-buffers-for-64-bit-DMA-to-workaround-hard.patch
http://files.zajec.net/enable-ht/0003-b43-make-HT-PHY-support-experimental.patch

Save all that 3 files on your disk and then do:

cd /foo/bar/wireless-next
git am 0001-b43-Relax-requirement-for-descriptors-to-be-in-the-D.patch
git am 0002-b43-use-8K-buffers-for-64-bit-DMA-to-workaround-hard.patch
git am 0003-b43-make-HT-PHY-support-experimental.patch

After that use "make menuconfig", enable BCMA, enable support for BCMA
in b43 and enable HT support in b43.

-- 
Rafał