[LAU] Migrating to 64-bit

[david]

Thomas Ilnseher wrote:
> Am Montag, den 25.06.2007, 18:28 -1000 schrieb david:
>> Thomas Ilnseher wrote:
>>> Am Samstag, den 23.06.2007, 10:35 -1000 schrieb david:
>>>> Hmm, the Atheros wireless chipsets seem to have good support in
>>>> general 
>>> I have an abit airpace (desktop wlan card) with an atheros chipset.
>>> 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG
>>> 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
>>>
>>> I could not get this to work.
>>>
>>> the hal refuses to load on this chipset, cause the subsystem IDs (!!)
>>> are not known to it. openhal doesn't support it, so also no luck.
>> Hmmm, I never went through HAL for wireless support. I downloaded and
>> compiled the WiFi drivers. But I don't have that chipset or 64-bit
>> hardware - the 64-bit hardware might be the source of the problem.
> No the hal in this case is NOT the hald you might refer to. It's the
> module ath_hal.ko that comes with madwifi. This consists of a closed
> source lib and some interface glue c files. this module creates an
> abstract if to the hardware, which the madwifi driver itself uses.

OK, I didn't know that.

>>> the last resort was ndiswrapper, so i tried to d/l some generic xp64
>>> drivers for this chipset, but you guessed - it also doesn't work.
>> Probably a victim of trying to run 32-bit software (ndiswrapper) under
>> 64-bit Linux. Or is there a 64-bit version of ndiswrapper?
>>
> there is a 64bit version of ndiswrapper. (of course you need XP 64 bit
> windowze drivers).
> 
> obviously, I would not have been able to compile, and load 32bit stuff
> in an 64 bit kernel. 

Like I said, I'm a bottom feeder - my "fast hot machine" around here is 
only a Sempron 1800+! ;-)

>>> and i can't use the original drivers from abit, cause they were smart
>>> enough to stick all files in an installshield sfx. unshield doesn't
>>> work,
>> Perhaps orange would?
> nice info, thx a lot. I'll try it.

Perhaps it will work. I don't know if it's using the same CAB libs that 
unshield is using ...

>>> and under wine explains me that it it found no drivers.
>> WINE is 32-bit, perhaps it's looking for 32-bit drivers, not 64-bit.
> nope. the problem is that wine doesn't wrap / emulate the windows calls
> to inquiry the hardware.

Sounds like something to mention to WINE developers. They should at 
least return information about whatever video/audio/network etc hardware 
they DO emulate - WINE on my laptop here happily connects to the 
internet when needed.

>> Sounds like 64-bit doesn't quite have as much driver support as it should.
> 
> This might be the case, but it's not the problem here. i tried to boot
> of an livecd, and compiled madwifi for 32bit, and it still won't work.
> 
> This is an genuine problem with closed source drivers (tm).

Ain't that the truth. You might try one of those USB external wireless 
adapters, perhaps they'd work?

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community