RE: [Etherboot-developers] Missing NIC Drivers

[Timothy L. <tl...@ro...>]

> Current code uses no encryption, although this would be fairly trivial
to
> add.  Encryption could always be switched on after you've downloaded
and
> booted the kernel, anyway.

I assume that any NICS that Linux support have the code to enable the
encryption available?
 
> There are slightly more stages to getting a wireless NIC initialised;
you
> have to join to an access point before you can transmit or receive.
With
> the Prism2 cards (the only ones currently supported by Etherboot), you
> also have to deal with the Info frames (out-of-band information) that
> arrive, otherwise your card's receive buffer gradually fills up.

That doesn't sound too bad.
 
> Also, the current code supports a PLX adaptor, i.e. a wireless PCMCIA
card
> slotted into a PCMCIA-to-PCI adaptor card.  This means that you have
to
> implement some aspects of PCMCIA: initialising the PLX chip, looking
for
> the PCMCIA card and doing the ISA-style initialisation of the PCMCIA
card
> before you can even start talking to the actual wireless hardware.

Hm, I had wondered how difficult one of those would be to implement.  Is
there enough of the PCMCIA process there to use for other PCMCIA cards
or is a more general solution required?