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

[George Rosamond]

On 02/02/13 12:56, Brian Callahan wrote:
> On 2/2/2013 12:28 PM, Jesse Callaway wrote:
>>
>> On Feb 2, 2013 12:12 PM, "Brian Callahan" <bcallah at devio.us
>> <mailto:bcallah at devio.us>> wrote:
>>  >
>>  > On 2/2/2013 12:01 PM, Edward Capriolo wrote:
>>  >>
>>  >> I purchased a new Lenovo Yoga
>>  >> http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/yoga/yoga-13/. SSD +
>>  >> 18GB ram. I am playing around with different installs right now,
>>  >> fedora, freebsd etc. The machine is pretty new so many of the
>>  >> os/distros do not have all the driver information they need. I am
>>  >> willing to "hang around" and wait for touch screen support.
>>  >>
>>  >> Right now the big blocker is it does not have a CAT5 and nothing is
>>  >> picking up it's wireless card. Onto my question.
>>  >>
>>  >> Does anyone know of an off the shelve USB wireless card that "just
>>  >> works" with modern OS's. It need not be fast. It could be a A or B
>>  >> speed, I do not care. Just looking for something that
>>  >> kickstart/jumpstart/graphical_installers auto-detects reliably
>> without
>>  >> driver disks etc.
>>  >>
>>  >> Thanks
>>  >> _______________________________________________
>>  >> talk mailing list
>>  >> talk at lists.nycbug.org <mailto:talk at lists.nycbug.org>
>>  >> http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>  >>
>>  >
>>  > Anything based on RTL8187L/RTL8187B chipset (urtw on OpenBSD) should
>> work OOTB on any BSD.
>>  >
>>  > eBay turns this up:
>>  >
>> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Alfa-500mW-USB-Adapter-Realtek-RTL8187L-AWUS036EW-5dBi-/380344755381
>>
>>  >
>>  > HTH
>>  >
>>  > ~Brian
>>  >
>>  > _______________________________________________
>>  > talk mailing list
>>  > talk at lists.nycbug.org <mailto:talk at lists.nycbug.org>
>>  > http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>
>> Thanks to you and Glen for this. I find it frustrating to be arned with
>> all of this informatiin, but still not being too sure of what's inside
>> the plastic. Specifically, I mean you can do a couple hours of research
>> and it's  then still a gamble because the mfgr will just up and change
>> the chipset... then make sure the windows driver supports it.
>>
>> Yes, this is not news to any of you, but just venting.
>>
>> Unless a continuous effort is made, with lots of labor to maintain a
>> database then we will always have to "hunt and gamble". The hunting
>> comes with owning stuff, but the gamble is no fun.
>>
>
> 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.

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

Which

>
> 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...

g