Re: Issues with wireless networking on Ibook G4

Hi,

I installed NetBSD 6.1.5 and NetBSD 7.2 on my Ibook G4. The Airport Extreme Internal card seems to work wit both (at least it can detect network with "ifconfig bwi0 list scan"). My usb wifi dongle ( Rosewill RNX-G1 ) does not seems to be supported by NetBSD 7.2 ( It did not create new device ). I did not tried the usb dungle it with NetBSD 6.1.5.

There is definitively a regression with NetBSD 8.0 and onward with the Airport Extreme card. Given the fact my usb dongle is not working too I wonder if this is just a coincidence or if it's a bigger problem. Does someone has a working wifi setup with NetBSD 8.0 (or onward) with the macppc port ?

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 12:54 PM Julien Savard <juliensavard17%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:

Hi,
I'm trying to use wifi on my ibookk g4 but i'm facing some issues.

First of all I tied to use the integrated AirPort Extreme card. The card seem to be well identified and assigned as "bwi0". Looking through the man I saw that the firmware was not included with netbsd. I downloaded it and extracted it where it should be (/libdata/firmware/bwi/V3).
Still the Wifi card doesn't seems to work. When I try to "up" the device I get a "bwi0: autoconfiguration error: device timeout" on console and in the logs."ifconfig bwi0 up; ifconfig bwi0 list scan" return nothing.
I found a closed PR wich seems to match my issue. However it'a back to NetBSD 4.0 and according to the PR, the patche should be apply from NetBSD 6.0 and so on. I tried with NetBSD macppc 8.0, 8.1 and 9.0. Same thing on all versions.

I also tried to use a usb wifi dongle ( Rosewill RNX-G1 ). Device is identified as urtw0. Nothing out of the ordinary seems to pop out in the logs. However it returns nothing when running "ifconfig urtw0 up; ifconfig urtw0 list scan". I tried with NetBSD macppc 8.1 and 9.0. I thoough it might simply be an incompatible device with NetBSD however I tried with a NetBSD 8.1 amd64 VM ( with usb passthrough) and it does return SSID when running "ifconfig urtw0 up; ifconfig urtw0 list scan".

Not sure but it might be related to the macppc port. Is WIFI ( ifconfig interface list scan) working on macppc ? Is it there some additionnal (obscure) steps on macppc to activate wifi ?

I will try to install NetBSD 6 and/or 7 on my Ibook to see if it was working before 8/9.