[OpenIndiana-discuss] bwn driver for Broadcom Wifi

[Jim Klimov]

Hello Ken, it took me a while to get around to trying the other drivers.
I compiled the HP pack with ndis-1.2.1 from opensolaris.cz archives,
and had several problems:

1) A string comparison function is defined in ndis sources that seems
identical to one in system headers, so I commented it out (maybe, my
big mistake?) I refer to strcasestr() in inf.c needed to build ndiscvt.

2) For some reason, the iconv translation of the INF file choked on the
file from HP archives, I inspected the file and found no errors on the
line reported. "iconv -c" produced the output I ultimately used. Maybe
it is a problem with an iconv provided by OI (still at oi_151a5 here).

3) In a not-very-unexpected twist, at least in a 64-bit boot the driver
(made from bcmwl564.sys) panicked my system. I did not yet try 32-bit,
because ultimately I do need 64-bit to work.

Finally, while googling around I saw references to ndis-1.2.3 and 1.2.5
that might have been the last ones published on OpenSolaris laptop site.
Do you know if those sources can still be found? I read that the NDIS
wrapper fixes might help here, more than matching an okay version of
binary drivers.

Would it help if I tried to recover or retype the kernel stacktraces
from the last failure? I remember the problem seemed to be in bcmndis
initialization and a jet of exception handlers above that until die().

2012-09-26 21:13, ken mays wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
> Are you using HP's Broadcom Wireless LAN Drivers sp48616.exe
> (v5.60.350.6) pack?
>
> DEVICES SUPPORTED:
> Broadcom 802.11g
> Broadcom 802.11a-g
> Broadcom 802.11a/g/pre-n
> Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n
> Broadcom 43225 802.11b/g/n
> Broadcom 4313 802.11b/g/n
>
> ~ Ken Mays
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru>
> *To:* ken mays <maybird1776 at yahoo.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 26, 2012 8:00 AM
> *Subject:* bwn driver
>
> Hello, Ken,
>
>    On http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/WiFi you mentioned that BCM4313
> can work with a "bwn" river and needs NDIS. Can you please elaborate
> on where to find and how to configure it?
>
>    "pkg install bwn" yields nothing on oi_151a5.
>
>    I followed instructions from https://www.illumos.org/issues/2156
> and
> http://learningsolaris.com/archives/2009/03/10/opensolaris-wifi-broadcom-bcm4312-on-dell-vostro-1710/
> to build a bcmndis of my own with winxp (bcmwl5) and win7 (bcmwl6)
> drivers, but all 32/64-bit variants led to laptop reboot panics.
>
>    So, if there is a recipe for OI - can you please share/link it
> on the Wiki?
>
>    Or is it just a pointer to work-in-progress (i.e. when FreeBSD
> "bwn" driver will be finally ported, it will support such hardware)?
>
> Thanks,
> //Jim Klimov
>
>