From: Martin Joseph (martyNT_at_barknaturalpet.com)
Date: Thu Dec 30 2004 - 11:24:51 PST
On Dec 30, 2004, at 10:59 AM, Victor Rehorst wrote:
> Martin Joseph wrote:
>> On Dec 29, 2004, at 10:00 PM, paul oberman wrote:
>>
>>
>>> here are the pictures:
>>>
>>> http://homepage.mac.com/poberman/wifi/PhotoAlbum153.html
>>>
>>
>> Huh, I see on the back of your card is says "bootrom: NO".
>>
>> Originally these Wavelan cards of all flavors had some flash memory on
>> them that held firmware... Later in the game the vendors of these
>> cards decided to save a few zazafroomonkies by eliminating the flash
>> on
>> each card.
>
> That may be true Marty, but typically a boot ROM is used to boot a
> computer's
> operating system over the network. Look at just about any PCI
> Ethernet card,
> it will have a socket for a 2764 ROM chip. The chip would contain
> enough code
> to bootstrap the machine by contacting a server on the network and
> downloading
> the rest of the OS loader into memory and then executing it.
True, but I don't think that is the context here? I think they mean is
there rom on the wireless card at boot? You might be right though...
My gold and silver cards don't have this designation either way (ie
bootrom yes or no).
>
> What you're talking about is sort of like software modem vs. hardware
> modem.
> When you install drivers for a soft modem, what it contains is the
> code that
> runs the generic DSP or whatever on the modem.
Not really, it's more like a hardware modem in both cases, but the
firmware that takes commands isn't present on the card itself.
Huh, I guess that is sort of like a software modem come to think of
it...
here is a link to an OpenBSD page where they discuss the change I am
talking about...
http://kerneltrap.org/node/4118?
PHPSESSID=e49686f256cece73f4bfe1dd6ce44e5d
Hopefully not munged by ecartis :~)
Marty
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