Hi Xose, On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 8:30 AM, Xose Vazquez Perez <xose.vazquez@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 06/19/2012 01:46 AM, Julian Calaby wrote: > >> As I explained previously, the cards are tuned and configured for a >> particular regulatory domain when they're manufactured. The driver >> cannot assume that the card will be capable of complying with another >> regulatory domain. > > > That's false. > > Atheros does not produce distinct chips for different countries or > markets. That's not what I meant. I meant that the *card* not the *chip* is configured. It would be incredibly wasteful for Atheros to produce different chips per market. IIRC the card can sometimes be built / configured to work properly within certain frequencies while disregarding the functionality of others, much like how some hardware expects to be used with Windows and fails utterly when Linux does things ever-so-slightly differently. As I understand it, the country code stored in the EEPROM is a way of making sure that the driver knows what to expect of the hardware so that it can stay within the known working range of the hardware. > <http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=125072768530674> > > There is only ONE chip, with custom "regdomain" values in the EEPROM. > And the *driver* applies constraints based on that value. No more no less. > Then, crda/wireless-regdb only can narrows things a bit more. Exactly. > Atheros chips can go beyond IEEE 802.11 frecuencies. Of course, a wireless card is essentially a software controlled radio transceiver with firmware designed to do IEEE 802.11. There is precious little that would prevent anyone from making it do other things, the Libertas chips used by the OLPC devices are an example, as is a group of people who were modifying Prism cards to work as stand-alone devices. Hardware can often be much more capable than what it's used for, for example, a certain type of TV tuner card can be turned into a quite powerful software defined radio, I have no reason to believe that this couldn't be done with a wireless card. Thanks, -- Julian Calaby Email: julian.calaby@xxxxxxxxx Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/julian.calaby/ .Plan: http://sites.google.com/site/juliancalaby/ -- 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
