On Saturday 10 July 2021 02:00:08 Maximilian Luz wrote: > On 7/10/21 12:54 AM, Pali Rohár wrote: > > [...] > > > > Also not sure if this is just my bias, but it feels like the Surface > > > line always had more problems with that driver (and firmware) than > > > others. > > > > Ehm, really? I see reports also from non-Surface users about bad quality > > of these 88W[89]xxx cards and repeating firmware issues. I have bad > > personal experience with 88W8997 SDIO firmware and lot of times I get > > advice about ex-Marvell/NXP wifi cards "do not touch and run away > > quickly". > > Yeah, then I'm probably biased since I'm mostly dealing with Surface > stuff. > > > I think that more people if they get mPCIe/M.2 wifi card in laptop which > > does not work, they just replace it with some working one. And not > > spending infinite time in trying to fix it... So this may explain why > > there are more Surface users with these issues... > > That might be an explanation. If it wouldn't need a heat-gun to open it > up, I'd probably have done that at some point in the past (there were > times when WiFi at my Uni was pretty much unusable with this device... > and I'm still not sure what fixed that or even if it's fixed completely). > > > > I'm honestly a bit surprised that MS stuck with them for this > > > long (they decided to go with Intel for 7th gen devices). AFAICT they > > > initially chose Marvell due to connected standby support, so maybe that > > > causes issue for us and others simply aren't using that feature? Just > > > guessing though. > > > > In my opinion that "Connected Standby" is just MS marketing term. > > I can only really repeat what I've been told: Apparently when they > started designing those devices, the only option with "Connected > standby" (or probably rather that feature set that MS wanted) was, > unfortunately for us, Marvell. > > > 88W[89]xxx chips using full-mac firmware and drivers [*]. Full-mac lot > > of times causing more issues than soft-mac solution. Moreover this > > Marvell firmware implements also other "application" layers in firmware > > which OS drivers can use, e.g. there is fully working "wpa-supplicant" > > replacement and also AP part. Maybe windows drivers are using it and it > > cause less problems? Duno. mwifiex uses only "low level" commands and > > WPA state machine is implemented in userspace wpa-supplicant daemon. > > > > [*] - Small note: There are also soft-mac firmwares and drivers but > > apparently Marvell has never finished linux driver and firmware was not > > released to public... > > > > And there is also Laird Connectivity which offers their own proprietary > > linux kernel drivers with their own firmware for these 88W[89]xxx chips. > > Last time I checked it they released some parts of driver on github. > > Maybe somebody could contact Laird or check if their driver can be > > replaced by mwifiex? Or just replacing ex-Marvell/NXP firmware by their? > > But I'm not sure if they have something for 88W8897. > > Interesting, I was not aware of this. IIRC we've been experimenting with > the mwlwifi driver (which that lrdmwl driver seems to be based on?), but > couldn't get that to work with the firmware we have. mwlwifi is that soft-mac driver and uses completely different firmware. For sure it would not work with current full-mac firmware. > IIRC it also didn't > work with the Windows firmware (which seems to be significantly > different from the one we have for Linux and seems to use or be modeled > after some special Windows WiFi driver interface). So... Microsoft has different firmware for this chip? And it is working with mwifiex driver?
