On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 11:00:31PM +0200, Nicolas Sergent wrote: > Hello, > > I have a laptop (Acer Aspire 1511LMi) with a broadcom wlan card which > has no driver for linux, and ndiswrapper does not work in pure64 as > there is no 64 driver for MS Windows... I think many of us have the same > problem! > As far as I can understand it, the only way to get this card working > (until Broadcom release the specs) is to run a 32 bits kernel, but in > that case, what would be the point in having a AMD64?
It's a fast CPU (significantly faster than Athlon), with SSE2, and with good power-saving when idle. (Down to 22W max at 1GHz, from 89W max at max speed.) It's not like it's crippled in 32bit mode. > Isn't it possible > to run a minimal 32 bits kernel in user-mode (in a kind of virtual > machine), just to run ndiswrapper on? Hmm, you mean route all your net traffic through vmware? That's so crazy it just might work. (I wrote the paragraph below about the kernel-userspace boundary before I read this carefully...) Maybe vmware even wouldn't be needed if UML can talk to hardware. Anyone care to comment on getting Linux under vmware to talk to hardware? > If this is totaly stupid I'd say having to use ndiswrapper is totally stupid, but I guess there's not much choice in AMD64 laptops at this point :( > and couldn't work, can please someone tell me > why (for my own culture)? Is this can be done, how can I help? the kernel-user boundary is well definined and has a limited number of system calls. The in-kernel stuff is constantly changing with new kernel releases, and probably would be harder to wrap in an emulation layer. (Besides, in-kernel function calls don't go through a context switch normally, and you'd have to introduce that, or put an x86 emulator like bochs in the kernel if you wanted to actually run 32bit code.) Perhaps pre-translating the ia32 code to amd64 code, like what gcj can do for java binaries -> machine code, would be better. It all boils down to open souce: good and flexible, closed source: bad and limiting. Depending on binary-only drivers from anyone puts you at their mercy. But you probably already knew that and didn't need me to lecture you... -- #define X(x,y) x##y Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X([EMAIL PROTECTED] , des.ca) "The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours! Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BC
