Re: Orinoco_cs WiFi under kernel-2.6.30

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 13:24 -0400, Ryan Novosielski wrote:
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> Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Sun, 2009-09-13 at 02:02 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> >> My classic Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card has not been working
> >> under Fedora/KDE (with WEP) for some time.
> >> Does anyone have this card working under Fedora?
> >> It works perfectly under Windows XP.
> >>
> >> I see in /var/log/messages that
> >> the firmware agere_sta_fw.bin cannot be found;
> >> but if this file is in fact required
> >> I don't understand why it is not provided with the orinoco_cs module?
> > 
> > Originally it wasn't provided with the module because the license that
> > the firmware was released under only allowed you (as the user) to get it
> > directly from Agere or on the CD that came with your card.  Your Linux
> > distribution could not legally repackage it and give it to you.
> > 
> > I think that was fixed though, and there is now a legally downloadable
> > firmware available here:
> > 
> > http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=tree
> > 
> > (click the "blob" link next to agere_sta_fw.bin and put that file
> > into /lib/firmware)
> > 
> >> Rather frighteningly, I read this remark from Dan Williams,
> >> who seems to be one of the two orinoco_cs developers:
> >> "Since the WE-18 support in orinoco is so new, 
> >> I'm not really surprised that 
> >> it could be failing for WEP or open networks."
> > 
> > That was long ago; orinoco is probably better now, but I haven't tested
> > it in a while.  It's worth a shot.  Of course, you wont' be able to
> > connect to 802.11g speeds since no orinoco cards can handle that, but at
> > least you may get something.  If not, we can debug it.
> 
> Slightly off topic, but not entirely -- does anyone know if this
> combination supports Master mode? I'm currently running one machine back
> at kernel 2.4, which is difficult to do for other reasons, because
> hermesap does not work in 2.6.

Better topic for linux-wireless I think.  I don't know offhand.  hostapd
in combination with the actual hostap drivers might get you there.

Dan