>>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:25 PM, Ritesh Sood wrote: >>>> does anyone have an idea when the atheros driver for Sparc platforms might >>>> be >>>> available. I >>>have been waiting since eternity to get my DLink DWL 520 >>>> Rev. B >>>> 802.11g PCI card working >>>on my Sun Ultra 60 (sun4u) running Solaris 10 >>>> (release 10/2008). >>> >>> You are probably better off getting something like a Dlink G730AP >>> if you need wireless on a sparc. >>> >>> I have some code that works on Solaris -9 Sparc with the Zydas >>> USB adapters (totally different code base than the open solaris >>> zyd driver, called zdwlan), but there hasn't been a pressing need >>> to follow up with it given the attitude towards sparc workstations... >> >> Well, there's no such thing as USB on a Ultra 60 :( > >Obviously, you have never tried to put a NEC based PCI >USB2.0 card in the U60. Trust me, it works. > >> The Ultra 60 does have ethernet though (gasp!) and that's how i work on it, >> remotely through xdm (well, dtlogin). Thing is, the damned thing is so noisy >> that >> i can't have it close by over an extended period of time. Hence the need for >> wireless access. >> A wireless ethernet bridge is one option that i'm considering. What's >> keeping me, >> other than the cost, is more wires and another wall plug for the bridge. An >> internal PCI card is so much more cleaner. > >The dlink AP G730 I have is miniature, and can be powered by >USB. gadgets like this shouldn't cost more than $20-30 from >ebay. > >however, I'm pretty sure there's a snowballs chance in hell that >the ATH stack will get ported to SPARC in any kind of time >frame that you would be able to use an internal PCI wifi card >with your U60. > >> From earlier posts that i'd read, it's seemingly not that hard to port the >> ath >> driver to sparc. There was talk of contributing money to hire Sam Leffler >> (apologies if i misspelled the name) to do the porting. I got my hopes up >> after >> the recent opening up of the HAL sources... but doesn't look like that's >> going to >> help my situation any time soon. > >I heard that too.
I checked out the Dlink G730AP more carefully this time. The way I can use it is that the card will be the 802.11g client to which the U60 will be connected via an ethernet cable. In other words, the Dlink G730AP will act as one of those so called "ethernet bridge", which brings me back to my reservation against more wires and power sources. However, since support for the internal PCI card is not going to materialize, I think i'll go for an ethernet bridge. One can be had on ebay between $25 -- $30. The G730AP is significantly more expensive. Again, thanks for the pointers... -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
