Working mini PCIe wireless?

[Adam McDougall]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 12:02:58PM -0500, Michael Proto wrote:

  Geoff Buckingham wrote:
  > I recently purchased the Dell I6400 Ubuntu laptop, with the express intent of
  > running FreeBSD on it.
  > 
  > My intention was to use this a working machine using PC-BSD, I.E. RELENG_6, limiting tinkering, experimentation to other systems.
  > 
  > It comes with an Intel 3945[1] mini PCIe card, which I knew would not work. So 
  > I ordered myself a Azurewave Atheros based mini PCIe card to replace it.
  > Unfortunatly the ath_hal[2] doesn't recognise the hardware revision, so that
  > doesn't work either.
  > 
  > Does anybody know of a mini PCIe wireless card that works under RELENG_6?
  > Failing that an ExpressCard? (The 6400 has no Card Bus)
  > 
  > Notes:
  > 
  > [1]I know there is a 3945 driver for 7 and an older rev fo 6, I tried it 
  > it locks up the machine.
  > [2] Sam has a more recent HAL on his "people" page, but the headers have 
  > changed making it non-trivial, for me at least, to compile into a
  > RELENG_6 kernel/module.
  > 
  
  I don't have access to my laptop at the moment (and hence can't pull the
  exact kernel output regarding the adapter), but I have a ThinkPad R60
  with the ThinkPad a/b/g miniPCI-e wireless card that worked fine under
  FreeBSD 6.2. I believe you can find the actual part here:
  
  http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=40Y7026&current-category-id=DD119CA6FA0E4518A4086EB8FF1FDD2B&model-number=9456
  
  Part number: 40Y7026
  
  
I ordered the same card from amazon, it works with my Dell Latitude D820 but for some
reason I get an occasional NMI (once a day or less) which panics FreeBSD or bluescreens
windows.  I found a workaround in FreeBSD, the POWERFAIL_NMI option.  It beeps and logs
an event instead of panicing.