[arch-general] b43: wireless issues

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from Magnus Therning's message of 2010-06-18 16:49:11 +0200:
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 08:55, Philipp Überbacher <hollunder at lavabit.com> wrote:
> > Hi.
> > I have the same chip and same issue. I found out that the b43 devs
> > didn't figure out yet how to get the chip to work correctly, so unless
> > something changed during the last weeks/months there's no real solution.
> > Using the apparently slower PIO instead of DMA is a kernel compiletime
> > option so far, but I read that as a workaround it's a module load option
> > beginning with .34.
> > It's a pity, the chip should have worked beginning with I afair .30. I
> > wasted loads of time trying to get it to work, without luck.
> > The broadcom driver works afair, but it annoyed me for some reasons.
> > So for now I'm looking forward to .34 to hopefully have at least working
> > wifi, even if slow.
> 
> I did find that there is a PIO-related option that I can put in
> modprobe.conf, but that doesn't seem to be address the problem I have
> (I also read that the b43 driver revert back to PIO automatically if
> there are DMA problems).  Next step I'll try one of the daily
> snapshots via the compat-wireless package.  If that doesn't work I'll
> be very irritated indeed, enough so to volunteer my services to the
> b43 devs for any testing they need to have done.
> 
> /M

I only read that stuff on their mailinglist and in some kernel log/mail
that they're gonna change it to a module load time option in kernel .34.
I don't know anything for sure. I don't think it reverts to PIO
automatically, and I don't think it will.
If you don't necessarily need the b43 driver then the broadcom thing in
AUR should work without too much hassle. One of the annoying things with
it is that you need to compile it against your kernel, so if you use
multiple kernels you're in for fun. Another nuisance is that the wifi
identifies itself as eth0 and wired as eth1. b43 is imho better in that
respect, eth0 for ethernet and wlan0 for wireless just makes more sense.
I also had the broadcom driver sometimes stall my machine for a couple
of seconds, usually after boot, which I consider bad behavior.

No idea about compat-wireless.
-- 
Regards,
Philipp

--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan