Re: [NTLK] WiFi driver registration ... so, it's gone?

From: Martin Joseph <NT_at_stillnewt.org>
Date: Mon Aug 07 2006 - 13:48:00 EDT

On Aug 7, 2006, at 8:04 AM, maynard@jmg.com wrote:

> On Mon, 7 Aug 2006, Lord Groundhog wrote:
>
>> You mean, there's no chance of WiFi security on my Newt?
>> :-o
>> That's the first bad news about the Newton I've had so far...
>>
>
> It's worse. There's a good chance that any given combination of
> card
> and driver won't work with your base station.
Actually the Wavelan Bronze turbo you have is known to be paticularly
finicky...
> I checked my tenants'
> linksys router (their's works, mine does not) to find out what the
> difference was: Their's is an old 802.11b station whereas mine is a
> newer
> 802.11b/g. And when I say it doesn't work, I mean not even the link
> light
> goes live.
You can dumb yours down to 802.11B also for a test. I think the
bronze might actually use an even slower rate (like 2mbits.sec) that
the newer bases don't like. The Wavelan Gold or silver cards don't
seem to be as picky.

>
> Further, the driver doesn't support WEP
It does for those of us who registered in the past.
> (as previously noted) and
> hasn't been developed in over a year. No new card support, no bug
> fixes.
> And, of course, no source since the author sold it as shareware.
> Now, it
> is abandon-ware.
This is true, but it's not as bad as you suggest. Although the
driver hasn't been update, Mr. Guyot has released a package called
"more WIFI" that adds support for many additional Cards.

Of course with a device as old as the Newton, it isn't surprising,
that you are more likely to want older WIFI cards for compatibility.
>
> I wonder what it would take to write a new wireless driver from
> scratch. There's probably a good deal of code in the Linux and BSD
> kernels
> that could be swiped for this purpose. Especially to document card
> internals.
Please do, we would all appreciate it. I think that Hiroshi's driver
was also based on a Unix project of sorts.

Marty

-- 
This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries
Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
Received on Mon Aug 7 13:50:16 2006

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Mon Aug 07 2006 - 14:30:01 EDT