I have a laptop with the broadcom BCM4312 wireless device. After some recent troubles with wireless not working out-of-the-box for this device, i had to run Linux on a relatively older kernel... and now when there are any software updates, i am have to be very careful.
Though information on the internet says that BCM43XX devices should work with PIO mode enabled, i could never get it working. Now that wireless is working on the older kernel, i couldn't care less about the PIO mode.
Nevertheless i am tracking the changelog that appear on new kernel updates on kernel.org. I though it would be helpful for others who are struggling with BCM4312/BCM43XX.
Please contribute to this thread if you spot something flowery about BCM43XX drivers' DMA mode on the changelog.
ChangeLog-2.6.34
Code:
commit b02914af4d7020828ce921a572589dd793517c09
Author: Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
Date: Thu Dec 10 17:35:01 2009 -0600
b43: Allow PIO mode to be selected at module load
If userencounter the "Fatal DMA Problem" with a BCM43XX device, and
still wish to use b43 as the driver, their only option is to rebuild
the kernel with CONFIG_B43_FORCE_PIO. This patch removes this option and
allows PIO mode to be selected with a load-time parameter for the module.
Note that the configuration variable CONFIG_B43_PIO is also removed.
Once the DMA problem with the BCM4312 devices is solved, this patch will
likely be reverted.
Signed-off-by: Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
Tested-by: John Daiker <daikerjohn@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>
