[Ndiswrapper-general] 1.7 release

[Giridhar P. <gi...@lm...>]

Version 1.7 has been released. Following is summary of changes since
1.6 released.

* Support for Atheros USB (used in DWL-G132, WG111T, WG111U etc)
  drivers natively (without the need for load_fw_ar5523 user space
  firmware layer introduced in 1.6 release) added. 
* Drivers and driver files are dynamically loaded and unloaded as and when
  necessary; this should save memory.
* Bug fixes / improvements.

As stated above, with this version, load_fw_ar5523 released in 1.6 is
no longer necessary. So if you have Atheros USB card, you can save
yourself all the trouble (including having to read the long
description of how to use it) by installing this version. These
devices come with two different drivers (each with .inf, .sys and
ar5523.bin file), one is firmware loader driver, named either athfmwdl
or athwpn and the other is card specific (e.g., wg111u for Netgear
WG111U). In 1.6 release, one has to install only card specific driver,
such as wg111u. With 1.7, you must install both firmware driver (with
athfmwdl.inf, for example) and the card specific driver (wg111u.inf,
for example). After that, load ndiswrapper as usual, as in the case of
any other driver. Then ndiswrapper will load and run athfmwdl driver
when it has to upload the firmware and card specific driver for
networking. With this, suspend / resume also works without any extra
work.

With this release, ndiswrapper implements Windows Driver Model (WDM),
so support for other WDM drivers can be added easily. Athfmwdl driver
explained above is one such driver.

-- 
Giri