Re: [Wirelessdriver-devel] I might add PRISM 2.5 support - a few questions

[Java N. <jav...@ho...>]

Hi Rob,

Thank you for your reply. I have a few more followup questions before I am 
ready to look at this in more detail.

>AN9900 and RM025 are available under NDA from Intersil.
>sorry, I can't  share them without breaking that agreement.

Do you have contact information or know where on the web to get the NDA? I 
believe they were taken over by another company.

>PRISM 2, 2.5 and 3 are all very similar.  The biggest differences are  in 
>form factor and integration.  I
>believe that RPSIM 2 was very  similar silicon to Lucent's Hermes chipset 
>and that PRISM 2.5  introduced
>USB as an interface type.

If this is the case, it would seem that it should be simple to get it to 
work, if it already handles PRISM 2.0. But I am not sure if the code even 
recognizes when I insert my card. When I recompiled the code and first 
inserted my PRISM 2.5 card, and then my Orinoco WaveLan, the program gave an 
OSX security warning asking whether I want to fix, use, or don't use the 
kernal extension, but this was not displayed until I inserted my Orinoco. 
The PRISM 2.5 card does not show up in ifconfig's output.

>>3) I am curious, where in the code is the xml file read and the card  type 
>>checked? And how
>>does the program distinguish what PRISM level a  card has?
>That is done by IOKit automatically. For information on how this works,
>see <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeviceDrivers/Conceptual/ 
>IOKitFundamentals/
>index.html>

So, are you saying that control is then never turned over to our code if the 
card is not listed in the file? (I had added the card info to the XML, but 
it did not help for my PRISM 2.5 card.)

>IOLog() written messages are written to the system console.  The  location 
>of this varies from
>system release to system release but is  easily accessed by the Console 
>app.  Some of them
>are written when  compiled as a release build, but these are generally 
>restricted to  error messages.

I noticed that some messages were written to /var/log/system.log when I 
inserted my Orinoco (but not for the PRISM 2.5 card):

Nov 14 12:52:59 Latinums-Computer mach_kernel: IOPCCard info:   
IOPCCard16Enabler::configure using index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 255, io 
0x0000-0x003f
Nov 14 12:52:59 Latinums-Computer mach_kernel: 
org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver: _wi_readChipInfos()
Nov 14 12:52:59 Latinums-Computer mach_kernel: 
org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver: Firmware version: 1-8.40
Nov 14 12:52:59 Latinums-Computer mach_kernel: 
org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver: Default channel 10
Nov 14 12:52:59 Latinums-Computer mach_kernel: 
org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver: Ethernet address 00:02:2d:64:8f:d3

>Not yet.  Much of the existing code base was pulled from NetBSD.  I do  
>have a new code base that
>will be released as soon as I can sort out  one last bug that hangs certain 
>card firmware. I'm hoping this is in  the next day or two.

Does your new code base add support for any more cards (especially the high 
output cards)? Is WEP support improved?

Has anyone started to look at supporting any PRISM 2.5 card before, or am I 
the first interested?

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