Open Firmware Released For Broadcom Wireless

mcgrof writes "Linux developers have announced the release of a reverse-engineered open source firmware for Broadcom 4306 and 4318 wireless hardware, licensed under the GPLv2. 'Although the base firmware is not fully 802.11 compliant, e.g., it does not support RTS/CTS procedure or QoS, we believe that someone could be interested in testing it. The firmware does not require the kernel to be modified and it uses the same shared memory layout and global registers usage of the original stuff from broadcom to ease loading by the b43 driver.' You can go check out and download the firmware at the Italian Universita' Degli Studi Di Brescia Open FirmWare for WiFi networks project page. This is a good example of clean room reverse engineering design where one group worked on specifications while another worked on the the driver and the firmware. Kudos to the specification writers and bcm43xx development team for their hard work."

Comments

Cool

[GFree678]

Does this mean Broadcom can finally stop acting like precious little bitches, resign themselves to the enviable and open-source their officials drivers so we can have complete support?

Why must they insist on holding out? It's obvious that if they don't open source their drivers, someone else will. Might as well supply official drivers in that case.

Re:Cool

[lukas.mach]

Is this really fair? Broadcom releases at least their ethernet drivers for Linux and Solaris as opensource. I expected that they do the same with they wifi drivers, but I don't really care about wifi.

Re:Cool

[vally_manea]

This is not about the wifi drivers which AFAIK are open source but about the binary blob the drivers load on startup

Re:Cool

[Hadlock]

I wouldn't care much either but a large percentage of laptops (my dell laptop for example) use broadcom wifi hardware and to get it to work I had to dig down to the console to implement a fix in ubuntu. Seeing as how more than 50% of consumer computers this year were laptops, this solves a very annoying issue for something like 60% of all non-thinkpad linux-laptop users.

Re:Cool

[kabloom]

FWIW, they Broadcom didn't help with the wireless drivers either.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel also has to work under those restrictions, and their drivers/firmware are not nearly as shitty. Also, the driver is at least open source.

See: iwlwifi.

It wasn't always this way, of course. ipw3945 and friends were asstastic.

I for one welcome...

[unixan]

... no longer needing ndiswrapper, even if it's getting getting pretty easy these days.

What type of processor is used

[boombox]

What kind of processor is used?

It does not seem like ARM code what I assumed, no general purpose registers at all.

Seems like some kind of memory only architecture.

Can anyone more knowledgeable chip in? Seems very interesting to play with.

Re:What type of processor is used

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the specs PDF, it's a MIPS32 core.

Re:What type of processor is used

[klapaucjusz]

Typically, it's MIPS32 R4000 architecture.

To be entirely pedantic, it's usually a MIPS32 4k core, which is derived from the old R4000 chip.

Usefull

[Casandro]

Obviously you can now implement all kinds of things in there. For example you could implement a simple wireless mesh router which would still work when your computer is in standby.

Error in Title

[kidde_valind]

When I first read the headline, I thought "Why on earth would anyone want to run Open Firmware on a wireless chipset" - because you know, Open Firmware is actually something else entirely.

Re:Error in Title

[drinkypoo]

There is no error in the title, because there is no trademark symbol appearing after "Open Firmware". Titles are always capitalized in proper English, and the word "Open" is applicable in this context. Slashdot editors don't and aren't, but this is not an example of one of their many obvious errors. There is a problem with your debug code. You have reported a parser bug as an input error.

Re:Shame on you Broadcom

[Detritus]

It isn't Microsoft's fault. I've gotten used to the institutional paranoia that is rampant in the today's electronics industry. Everything is a trade secret. Schematics, if available, are mostly useless. When the product's functionality is hidden inside FPGAs and microcontrollers with proprietary firmware, you're screwed. In the old days, they used standard parts and you could learn something by reading the schematics, which were included with the product.

Point-to-Point

[msgmonkey]

This would be really useful if you wanted to develop a protocol for single long distsance point-to-point linke. I seem to remember Intel was developing something for use in developing countries with a special version of a wireless router but this gives you the source so has much more hack value.

Re:Point-to-Point

[charlesnw]

You mean like these guys: http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/wiki/Wireless ? In this project, we address the following question: What are the link- and MAC-layer modifications essential to achieve good transport performance in multi-hop WiLD networks? In addressing this problem, an important constraint is that any solution should continue to leverage existing 802.11 hardware to preserve the cost savings.

Hope it works someday

[drinkypoo]

What I really need is to be able to pitch over bcm43legacy for a driver which supports Master (AP) mode. It's really pathetic how many cards DON'T do this. I think you can hack 3945abg drivers to do it, but the ONLY reliable host is Atheros. (PC Engines sells Atheros-based Wistron MiniPCI for like $29...)

Re:Hope this works for me

[rs232]

It's easier to moan on slashdot ..

https://launchpad.net/auto-ndiswrapper

Re:Shame on you Broadcom

[SCHecklerX]

Yup. Luckily my new dell laptop allowed me to swap out the broadcom stuff that came with it for an intel wireless card instead. $20. Works flawlessly, even with kismet. Bonus, can run managed and monitor mode at the same time:

http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=iwl3945
http://www.google.com/products?q=intel+3945&btnG=Search+Products&show=dd

So, for the hassle, I'd rather have a card that is properly supported, and companies *other* than broadcom will continue to get my money.

Firmware, not driver

[klapaucjusz]

... no longer needing ndiswrapper

You're confused. There already are reverse engineered drivers for Broadcom chips, and they are included in the Linux kernel tree, no less (b43 and b43legacy). These drivers were not developed by Broadcom, who provide their own binary driver for 2.4 kernels (wl.o).

This is about the firmware -- the binary blob that is loaded into the chip's embedded CPU, and with which the drivers, whether binary or opensource, need to interact.

I, for one, welcome open source firmware, and am looking forward to using the firmware's idea of link quality in my mesh networking experiments.

Re:Firmware, not driver

[Ian Alexander]

I haven't had any problems getting it. Ubuntu 8.10's restricted driver manager let me enable it pretty painlessly (Check the "Broadcom STA Driver" and reboot) and Broadcom has a download page where you can get it. I've compiled it manually once or twice for distributions which don't have packages yet.

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php