Trying to boot from USB pendrive image on a netbook

To: Robert Elz <kre%munnari.oz.au@localhost>

Subject: Trying to boot from USB pendrive image on a netbook

From: Michel Behr <michelbehr%gmail.com@localhost>

Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:28:39 -0200

Do you think it would be possible to use the windows drivers for atheros through ndiscvt?
Because right now I don't see any other option to use wireless on my laptop with netbsd.

I know freebsd is supporting it (link below) but I don't know how to port their driver to netbsd.

1. Try ndiscvt

2. Try porting from freebsd

3. Check if I can help whoever is working on this in netbsd (I like that option even if I follow the other ones)

4. Buy an external USB wireless device. :-)

On Wednesday, February 12, 2014, Robert Elz <kre%munnari.oz.au@localhost> wrote:

Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 09:03:55 -0200
From: Michel Behr <michelbehr%gmail.com@localhost>
Message-ID: <CACKN2+xKC71Lc6ktqp683F=g7j=U9AAzfEaJRiAQpr6y7s+J=w%mail.gmail.com@localhost>

| I'm assuming in dmesg I should consider the line that says:
| vendor 0x168c product 0x0032 (miscellaneous network, revision 0x01) at pci2
| dev0 function 0 not configured
|
| So "miscellaneous network" means "wireless card ", considering that
| Ethernet was correctly recognized and assigned as re0, right?

The "miscellaneous network" just means that the PCI register that
says what kind of card (or chip) it is says it is a network chip, but
here, yes, that is the wireless card. I have the same thing in my Laptop.

You can look this stuff up on the web, just search for "pci devide
identification" or something similar to that - there are numerous lists of
vendors, and their assigned device numbers. Some of the lists are more
complete and accurate than others...

But this one is even in NetBSD's pcidevs file (/usr/src/sys/dev/pci/pcidevs)

vendor ATHEROS 0x168c Atheros Communications
product ATHEROS AR9485 0x0032 AR9485 Wireless LAN

So what you (and I) have is an Atheros AR9485. NetBSD doesn't support it
yet, FreeBSD does. Support in NetBSD is probably regarded as "close" - someone
just needs to finish it (it will be in the athn driver I expect.)

| I think there might be other devices not recognized,

There probably are - modern PCs contains all kinds of (often irrelevant)
junk for which there are no drivers. You only want to worry about
unrecognised hardware when something that you want to do, and expect to
be able to do, shows up as unsupported on your system. As long as
everything that matters works, other stuff lying around unused is harmless.

kre