NetGear WG511T and WPA support on FreeBSD 8.2

[Hans Ottevanger]

On 01/13/12 22:17, _ wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Since I've run into problems getting an ndisgen generated driver for my
> Realtek RTL8185 54M to work on
> my FreeBSD 8.2 (i386) system - kldload on the driver generates a permanent
> kernel crash-, I am currently
> thinking about buying the NetGear WG511T PCMCIA bus driven card.
>
> I would like to ask if there are any users on this list that make use of
> this card and that can confirm whether
> or not this cards works fine alongside with WPA/WPA2 on 8.2 or 9.0 if I
> decide to upgrade?
>
> I am aware of the supported hardware list. The card in discussion is not
> listed as supported.
> However, this could still be the case, since I read in an older 7.0 related
> thread
> http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=1424 that it did work, at
> least at one point in time.
>
>
> Thanks
>

Hi,

Maybe a bit late to react, but I have been traveling lately ...

I have two WPA511T adapters (slightly different from the WG511T you 
refer to). I used them intensively for years in a pair of antique 
Toshiba laptops and they have actually always worked (since 6.x, I 
believe) without any issues and they still do with a recent 8.2-STABLE. 
I use wpa_supplicant, mostly with WPA2.

It is recognized as follows:

ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0x88000000-0x8800ffff irq 10 at device 0.0 on 
cardbus1
ath0: [ITHREAD]
ath0: AR2413 mac 7.9 RF2413 phy 4.5

Of course there could still be PCMCIA issues on a different laptop, but 
since the WG511T also has an Atheros 5212 chipset and Atheros chipsets 
for 802.11g have excellent support in FreeBSD, I would expect it to 
work, even with a GENERIC kernel.

Kind regards,

Hans Ottevanger