RE: [Etherboot-developers] Missing NIC Drivers

[Michael B. <mb...@fe...>]

> I assume that any NICS that Linux support have the code to enable the
> encryption available?

AFAIK.

> > 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.

It's not; I just thought I'd document the answer to the question for 
posterity.  :)

> > 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?

No, it wouldn't really generalise, although it would provide a useful 
starting point for implementing PCMCIA support.

Michael