On Sun, 2008-03-02 at 22:19 +1100, Julian Calaby wrote: > Hi, > > I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this, but here goes. > > I have recently obtained a Netgear WG311v3 card, under the > misunderstanding that it was an atheros card. (though I have no idea > how I managed to do that) > > Following some random FAQ, I have this card working reliably, for the > moment, using ndiswrapper, which is more than suitable for my needs. > > However I yearn for more. > > I have discovered here: > http://users.linpro.no/janl/hardware/wifi.html > that this card appears to use a Marvel 88w8355 "Libertas" chipset. > However I have not yet confirmed the exact chip used on my card. I think you mean "88w8335" actually. The Netgear WG311v3 uses the Marvell 88w8335 chipset. > I believe variants of this chip, are supported on SDIO, (8385, 8686) > USB (8388) and CompactFlash (8385) using the libertas driver. Correct; the existing Libertas driver (perhaps somewhat mis-named) supports only the FullMAC variants of the libertas family. The other, lower-numbered chips in the libertas family (8335, 8310, etc) are all more softmac parts and not supported by the existing libertas driver. > Annoyingly I can find no information on this chip, or anything related > to it, and I have heard that Marvel has been relatively uninterested > in supporting these chips on Linux. Correct; Marvell isn't that interested in supporting the older libertas family chips in Linux (ie, anything < 8388 actually). They have expressed interest in getting their TopDog 802.11n solution working in Linux however. > I also note that this chip appears to have been designed exclusively > for the embedded market, and as such, my card is somewhat rare, which > has probably contributed to the lack of any interest in a pci driver. > > I can also find no information on a pci version of the libertas > driver, only a proposal which appeared to go nowhere due to lack of > documentation. I also cannot find any information on any linux support > for this card outside of using ndiswrapper. There's an existing vendor net80211-based driver for the 8335 here: http://git.infradead.org/?p=users/dwmw2/marvell-db64660-2.6.12.6.git;a=tree;f=drivers/net/wireless/marvell_softap;h=566585b308d53a7006814c77dedae73cc919cbef;hb=HEAD There's also some reverse-engineered bits here: http://www.saillard.org/linux/mrv8k/ and the mac80211 port of mrv8k here: http://david.woodhou.se/mrv.tar.gz though the last one here panic-ed in the interrupt handler when I tried it last on 2.6.22. > As such, I am considering reverse engineering the pci interface for > this chipset, and hopefully linking it up with the existing libertas > driver. Don't link up with the existing libertas driver, they are just too different (softmac vs. fullmac). > I was hoping to use the ndiswrapper driver as a starting point, using > it as a black box to see how it talks to the PCI card. (possibly > hacking together a OS level PCI sniffer) and hopefully, what I'll see > will match up to what's going on in the libertas driver for similar > tasks, and then I should be able to write the necessary code (or > specifications) to do this. > > I am also concerned about any possible legal ramifications of this > reverse engineering. Is it all right for me to do this, providing that > I treat the ndiswrapper driver as a black box? or am I too close to > non-free code to have my code be untainted? I'd say first, try to whip the existing mrv8k-mac80211 port into shape and you probably won't have to worry much about the legal ramifications. You can look at the GPL-ed vendor driver (from the git I posted) for pointers about hardware-specific stuff, but after the 8388 driver experience, I'd strongly advocate writing a driver from scratch (or basing off mrv8k) and not using existing Marvell vendor drivers as a starting point. Dan -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
