Re: pci wireless network adapter

On Fri 03 Apr 2009 at 06:39:03 PM +1100, Giles Lean wrote:
>
>George Georgalis <george <at> galis.org> wrote:
>
>> BTW, how did you determine the card was compatible? In 
>> http://netbsd.org/support/hardware/pci.html
>> the ral(4) is the only wireless I could find.
>
>I started with 'man -k wireless'; maybe that web page could be
>updated a bit.
>
>$ man -k wireless | grep 802
>atu (4) - Atmel at76c50x 802.11B wireless network interfaces
>atw (4) - ADMtek ADM8211 802.11 wireless network driver
>awi (4) - AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless network driver
>ipw (4) - Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 IEEE 802.11 driver
>iwi (4) - Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG/2915ABG IEEE 802.11 driver
>ral (4) - Ralink Technology IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless network driver
>ray (4) - Raytheon Raylink / WebGear Aviator IEEE 802.11 2Mbps Wireless
>rtw (4) - Realtek RTL8180L IEEE 802.11b wireless network driver
>rum (4) - Ralink Technology USB IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless network device
>wi (4) - WaveLAN/IEEE and PRISM-II 802.11 wireless network driver
>wlanctl (8) - examine IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN client/peer table
>wpa_supplicant (8) - WPA/802.11i Supplicant for wireless network devices
>wpi (4) - Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless network driver
>
>Not that it's plain sailing from there; while many of those
>manual pages list cards the manufacturers switch from chipset
>to chipset and model number to model number apparently at whim.

in the past, shopping for laptop or desktop, I've brought bootable
media to the store for a test drive....

I don't think these are all pci, but the situation speaks to a
need for a queryable matrix or db of capability.

Would be really cool if synonymous terms could be queried
in a running kernel or the source code. But in my little
world, I'm waiting for a delivery from Wal-Mart so I can
get networking on my box...