On Sat, 2010-11-20 at 11:29 +1100, Julian Calaby wrote: > Hi all, > > Once again, someone is trying to build a working driver for the Marvel > 88w8335 chipset, and is once again hampered by a lack of > re-distributable or official firmware. (See: > http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=128923265210125&w=2 ) > > As such, on Denis's behalf, I'm asking if anyone knows of anyone at > Marvel that they can poke in an attempt to get a re-distributable > firmware for this chipset released for eventual inclusion into > linux-firmware. > > I believe that this chipset is pretty much obsolete (being only an > 802.11g part) so I cannot see any reasonable reason not to release the > firmware, especially given that newer chipsets ("TopDog" - see the > mwl8k driver) have had re-distributable firmware released along with > open source Linux drivers for some time now. > > If we cannot obtain proper firmware files, the very least Marvel could > do would be to bless the *BSD Malo driver's firmware files (obtainable > here: http://www.nazgul.ch/malo/malo-firmware-1.4.tgz - see > http://www.unix.com/man-page/freebsd/4/MALO/ for more info) with a > proper re-distributable license. > > In terms of the actual chipsets in question, I'm referring to the > 88w8335, 88w8338, and 88w8385 chipsets. I believe Marvel refers to Note that the 8385 shouldn't be included in this list, since it's a FullMAC chip, is handled already by the 'libertas' kernel driver, and we've already got firmware for its CF & SDIO variants in linux-firmware along with the 8388, 8682, 8686, and 8688. Dan > them as being part of the "Libertas" family of chipsets - however they > don't have the fancy mesh stuff that the chips the libertas driver > talks to have - and are also PCI. > > A previous effort in 2008 is viewable here: > http://lwn.net/Articles/275719/ and searching for "mrv8k" reveals the > remnants of that effort which mostly happened before my involvement in > this. > > A proper "official" set of firmware files would smooth one of the > bumps in getting proper support for this driver into the Linux Kernel. > (as well as helping the BSD folks with the Malo driver) Marvel has > shown that they are willing to provide some support for the open > source community with the TopDog driver, as well as the driver for the > SAS chipset. Hopefully they can continue their support with what would > be a small gesture in support of our efforts to write a driver for > this old chipset. > > Thanks, > -- 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
