From what I've been able to gather, Air Port Extreme, Apples 802.11g card, is made by Broadcom which has no intention of releasing a Linux driver or even specifications so that others may make such a driver. And although Im aware of petitions and other such tactics to encourage the production of such a driver, I have not found any group or project which is attempting to reverse-engineer a driver at this point. Do any exist or is there another way to get WiFi access through Linux on my iBook, which does not have a PCMCIA slot.

On Sat, Dec 25, 2004 at 07:15:54PM +0000, nDcEnT wrote:
> >From what I've been able to gather, Air Port Extreme, Apples 802.11g card, is made by Broadcom which has no intention of releasing a Linux driver or even specifications so that others may make such a driver. And although Im aware of petitions and other such tactics to encourage the production of such a driver, I have not found any group or project which is attempting to reverse-engineer a driver at this point. Do any exist or is there another way to get WiFi access through Linux on my iBook, which does not have a PCMCIA slot.

There are some USB wifi sticks which work, and you could naturally use a
ethernet wifi access point, which is broadly in the same range of price as the
usb or pcmcia ones, altough maybe a bit more bulky.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Thank you for the response.

I was more refering to if it were possible to install a different mini-PCI card into my iBook, rather than adding something externally, but I may be forced to go USB. The mini-PCI slot on the iBook is easily accessable (located directly under the keyboard) and has a nice connector for an antenna which would be a shame to waste.

Thanks again.

On Mon, Dec 27, 2004 at 01:27:56AM +0000, nDcEnT wrote:
> Thank you for the response.
>
> I was more refering to if it were possible to install a different mini-PCI card into my iBook, rather than adding something externally, but I may be forced to go USB. The mini-PCI slot on the iBook is easily accessable (located directly under the keyboard) and has a nice connector for an antenna which would be a shame to waste.

Definitively not, the airport extreme, altough using the mini-PCI standard
name, ar in no way standard, and can thus not be replaced by a non-apple
mini-pci card. That said, we could imagine building ourself an alternative
airport card, with a supported chipset, which would fit in nicely in the
powerbook/ibook case.

We could start this as an open-hardware project, using geda and stuff, what do
you think ? I will investigate if this can be done. My brother is studying for
electronic engineer, but i am not sure he still has the competence to do this
kind of stuff, will ask him later ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther

I love the idea, but I would not be able to contribute significantly to it, as I am already dedicating all my spare time to the Linux-NTFS project.

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 01:23:35PM +0000, nDcEnT wrote:
> I love the idea, but I would not be able to contribute significantly to it, as I am already dedicating all my spare time to the Linux-NTFS project.

I think i even have the ideal ship for that, the same that asus ships, since
the taiwanese manufacturer apparently does GPLed drivers.

I understand that you would not be interested, but if we were to propduce a
bunch of those, you would buy one ? It would be a GPLed free-hardware project,
or something such, i think.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Although significantly more difficult, would it be possible to create a device that would aid in the reverse engineering of a driver by listening to the I/O of the existing AirPort Extreme card? There are so many computers coming with Broadcom chipsets (Apple, Dell, and others) for their WiFi that it would really be more benificial to the Linux community.

On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 12:39:56AM +0000, nDcEnT wrote:
> Although significantly more difficult, would it be possible to create a device that would aid in the reverse engineering of a driver by listening to the I/O of the existing AirPort Extreme card? There are so many computers coming with Broadcom chipsets (Apple, Dell, and others) for their WiFi that it would really be more benificial to the Linux community.

And they should be boycotted.

Well, it certainly is possible, but i have a feeling that it would be more
time consuming than going the creating new hardware way.

Friendly,

Sven Luther