Replacing Broadcom miniPCI with Atheros

[Chris Kloiber]

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 23:27, Brian Stretch wrote:
> Yes, but it only works on 32-bit Linux, as this thread explains:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=4103096&forum_id=36471
> 
> I want to run 64-bit Fedora Core on my Athlon 64 notebook. 
> 
> Alan Cox pointed me to where the problem lies (thanks Alan!).  Like IBM,
> HP has a whitelist of approved wireless miniPCI cards in their BIOS.  Since
> the Atheros card is not on the whitelist and Broadcom's rectal-cranial
> inversion shows no sign of correcting, 64-bit Linux users are currently SOL. 
> I've got one of HP's research techs looking into this but I'm not very
> hopeful.  It's too bad, under Windows the wireless range is very impressive
> thanks to the two antenna panels integrated behind the screen.  Does
> anyone know whether eMachines has a similar whitelist in their Athlon 64
> notebooks?  What about ASUS and Acer, etc?  

Apparently not. I butchered a Netgear WG311 desktop adapter based on the
Atheros and my M6807 boots and 'lspci' identifies the card. (there's a
minipci card under that shield, but it's soldered in where the side
clips for the socket are. A little bit of solder wick and you're home
free.) The WG311 only sports one antenna connection on the minipci board
however. (there is a pad for another, but where would I get one of the
connectors?) I have not even tried to actually make it work yet though.
I got lazy when I got my WPC11 working in the PCI slot.

Which brings me to another topic near and dear to me. I just got the
M6807 installed this morning using the x86_64 tree from yesterday
(20040423) and I recompiled the kernel srpm to support the eMachines
M680x machines. I haven't made my rpms public yet however. Is there
sufficient interest in my doing so along with DIY instructions? I have
*everything* working on the laptop except the Broadcom Wireless and
kudzu (which mysteriously panics the box, mysterious because it changes
the screen to something between Klingon and Romulan, and as we all know
there's no freakin' serial port on this bugger.) and it also panics at
the very end of 'halt' when 'acpi_power_off' (or something like that) is
called.
 
-- 
Chris Kloiber