Hi,

Is wi-fi working on Backfire + WL500-W ? or does it mean for those of us who own it are still stuck with Kernel 2.4 or else get an atheros wi-fi card to be able to use 2.6?

Regards,

Zinahe A.

The WL-500W has a Broadcom 802.11n card, they're not yet supported by b43. As it has a mini-pci slot you can swap the card for an Atheros one if you need 2.6.
http://nuwiki.openwrt.org/oldwiki/OpenW … kernel.2.6

Please don't flame me for asking this, but is it possible to use Backfire (2.6 kernel) with just Wireless-G on the same device ? (and wait for N-PHY in the mean time

Zinahe A.

I can't see why anybody would flame you
The official page (http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43) is not clear on these details, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, the entire hardware initialization is different between Broadcom N cards and older ones, so b43 is not able to use N cards at all, not even in their B/G modes.

I also have a WL500-W and would love Backfire/N.  It seems like DD-WRT is getting 802.11n for this model under a 2.6 kernel.  Any chance of porting their work over to OpenWRT (I want to use ipsec, so just using DD-WRT isn't an option)?

@skug67:
I checked on ddwrt site and I couldn't find that information. Could you please give a link to where it says so ?

By the way, the problem is not running Kernel 2.6 to run on the WL-500W; which you definitely can, But to get wireless working

Zinahe A.

You may be on to something.  I this thread (http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=63757) says that you can run the DD-WRT 2.6 kernel on the wl500-w (depending on your CFE, and mine was the more current one).  I assumed that meant the full DD-WRT featureset.  I went ahead and installed it (using the "big" image [4th one] from this link http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=388014).  It booted up fine, and the radio even came online and broadcast its SSID.  But when I tried to change the wifi settings and reboot, the system froze (although it appears to be reflashable and I will probably clean it up later today).

That's what I thought would happen. Anyway, it looks like both OpenWRT and dd-WRT would need to use the open source b43 driver for the broadcom radio card (i.e. bcm4321 in the case of WL-500W) which unfortunately is lacking at the moment.

Keeping the fingers crossed.

Zinahe A.

If you still have DD-WRT installed (with a 2.6 kernel), can you please send the output of "uname -a" and "dmesg"? Thanks.

As long as this patch is in, you get no N-PHY support.
There was work on the driver recently to add N-PHY support to b43, but for some reason OpenWrt disabled it.

You can go on IRC and ask about this. Please post what they said.

(Last edited by towolf on 16 Apr 2010, 11:56)

Just open up your WL500W and slap an atheros 80211N card. I have one running here at the house with backfire and a $20 tp-link 300mbps card in it.

Watch out what you buy if you want to try, because there is this bug, which bit me last month.

(Last edited by towolf on 18 Apr 2010, 15:38)

Yeah, most sites say that use of that card requires a certain board. I have no issue with the tp-link card or a R52N card running in it.

Do you have a link so I can read up on that?

It looks like everybody is adding a mini-PCI on the WL-500W these days. And I'm thinking of doing the same.

Has anyone used "Sparklan WMIA-199N mini-pci" for this purpose ?

Thanks,

Yes and it won't be detected in 2.6, doesn't work in backfire either.
I added that to the bugreport some time ago :-)

What about http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/asus/wl500gp?s[]=table&s[]=hardware - seems to be the same chipset as 500W

The same board, but not the same wireless chip.

500gP has Broadcom 4318. 500W has Broadcom 4329.

Check the status here: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drive … =%28b43%29