[nycbug-talk] Searching for a "Plug and play" wireless network card

[Brian Callahan]

On 2/2/2013 1:42 PM, George Rosamond wrote:
*snip*
>>
>> I've found the Realtek stuff never changes the chipset on a product. A
>> different chipset will have a different product name/number. Plus they
>> tend to advertise the chipset openly and directly. Much different from
>> some of the big-name vendors, indeed!
>>
>
> The nice thing is that with the declining margins/cheaper production, a
> la carte components aren't the monopoly of the big manufacturers that
> you have to wait on them for "niceties" like documentation.
> AFAIK/remember, it was the Taiwanese manufacturers who the OpenBSD
> people had an easier time accessing, not the bcms of the world.
>

Yup. For this reason, I make sure to buy Realtek wireless stuff. As an 
added benefit, urtw(4) doesn't require any firmware, so it's perfectly 
usable in bsd.rd (in fact, I use wireless all the time to install new 
snapshots to my yeeloongs).

>> The manpages usually have a list of hardware known to work with each
>> driver. Admittedly, it's sometimes non-exhaustive.
>
> Which
>

ath(4) comes to mind...

>>
>> Of course, if you have something you know has a good chipset and it
>> comes up unidentified, write up a patch or let a dev know
>> (me/okan/others? for OpenBSD, I'm sure there are devs for other BSDs
>> lurking here) so we can write up a patch.
>>
>> I wonder if there's a way we can take the dmesgd entries, pull out the
>> networking info, and keep that in its own separate database? Just a
>> thought :)
>
> You mean dynamically?  Like queries across all the files based on
> categories?  hmmm.. . . good idea. the problem is there a way to
> indicate network stuff across all the dmesg types?
>
> OTOH, I'm sure we could just do a dump of the contents if you wanted...
>

I do mean dynamically. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the 
"hoping the right chip is inside the plastic" camp as Jesse pointed out.

Even a dump would be useful for people looking to buy wireless cards.

~Brian

> g
>
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