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

James Anslow james at jamesanslow.net
Sat Aug 27 09:38:33 EDT 2011


On 27/08/11 14:22, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> 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.
>
Thanks for your help.

Will I find the ability to enable support for BCMA and HT support in the
menuconfig file or elsewhere?

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