WLAN

[Davesworld]

OK folks, I've been talking with folks who are working on the new flashrom and I have a very good explanation as to why wireless pci nics are a problem across the product line on a Cobalt and why they DO work when using a cardbus pci adapter.

The flashroms as they have always existed in Cobalt hardware do not do a pci init. What this means is that  it doesn't look for executable code at an address where a pci card's bios would be. This especially affects wireless nic cards and being able to load proprietary firmware. As to why it would work on a carbus, the only explanation I can think of is that the pcmcia controller takes care of some of this. Basically, any self initializing pci card will work and the ones that don't, well, unless this either gets fixed in the rom or if it can be worked in the OS kernel itself, we're in the same boat as many Sparc users as to why some cards work and some don't.

Since this IS for all intents and purposes, x86 hardware without a normal bios, I would expect that there should be SOME way to get the pci init function to work.

The three problems that have always existed in Cobalt roms is:

Lack of USB boot (This is already shown to work in pre-release 2.6 kernel roms)

Lack of PCi init (no immediate solution yet but doesn't affect all hardware and one can go Cardbus)

Lack of SMP support (Only matters with an XTR as it has a second Socket 370 on the board and is silly to use as a firewall)