Using a Netgear MA301

[David Gibson]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 11:53:29PM +1000, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 02:45:52AM +1000, David Gibson wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 01:04:58AM +1000, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I've seen variuos references to people using this PCI host adapter to use a
> > > wireless card in a desktop system. However, no matter what drivers I load,
> > > none of them seem to work.
> > > 
> > Well, I should be getting an MA401 and MA301 in the next couple of
> > days, so I will soon find out what the situation is.
> 
> Well, according to a question on a freebsd list, it's got a PLX 9052 like
> many of these wireless bridges. They just needed to add the PCI ID pairs to
> their driver. It's if_wi.c if it matters.

Oh, ok, it's one of those.  These appear to be a kind of whacky
transparent PCI <-> PCMCIA bridge.  Many of the adaptors are real
PCMCIA controllers which the PCMCIA subsystem can talk to, but the PLX
makes the PCMCIA card appear to be a PCI device.

> Unfortunatly, I can't find this chip mentioned anywhere in the linux kernel
> source. Seems to be some kind of PCI controller.
> 
> Am I correct in thinking that the driver is in orinoco.c and orinoco_cs.c is
> merely a wrapper for pcmcia cards? In that case, do you just need a skeleton
> orinoco_pci.c to make it work. Or do we need a simple bridge driver for it?

That's right.  In fact orinoco_plx.c already exists, contributed by
Daniel Barlow.  It's not in the kernel (yet), but it's in the 0.08
release of the driver on http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson/dldwd.

> I can't beleive this hasn't been done before...

-- 
David Gibson			| For every complex problem there is a
david at gibson.dropbear.id.au	| solution which is simple, neat and
				| wrong.  -- H.L. Mencken
http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson