View Single Post
  #8   (View Single Post)  
Old 9th June 2013
ocicat ocicat is offline
Administrator
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 3,318
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by vanGrimoire View Post
...maybe there's an issue with the USB portion?
While I applaud you for attempting to identify causes, I don't believe that questioning the USB subsystem is likely to be a fruitful endeavour.

Integrated circuit manufacture has at multiple points in the process opportunities which features/bug fixes can be layered on to the chips themselves. In the case of wireless chips (which is a volatile market...), chips with the same model number may or may not have features enabled. The production of any particular chip may be interrupted in order to fix identified problems or add/subtract features -- all while the model number remains the same. Who gets what chip depends upon the time contracts are finalized with customers & what is specified in the contract.

I have no knowledge of what chip was used when the driver was developed & what are the differences between it & the chip discussed in this thread, but I suspect there are driver differences between the operating systems mentioned. This would account for why differences are seen in the behaviour between operating systems.

When it comes to compatibility questions where wireless chips work in one operating system but not another, the most direct approach to isolating root causes is to study the source code to the driver itself. Given the contention between the GNU & most other licences, Linux driver code cannot be officially ported to the *BSD's & vice versa. Note that the supporting structure around either environment is likely to be different, so thinking that code from one platform can be dropped into another without modification is not realistic. Nevertheless, if you are serious about attempting to resolve compatibility problems, study the driver code, & debug. If you get something to work, post diff(1)'s to OpenBSD's tech@ mailing list, & see what the project developers say.

Last edited by ocicat; 9th June 2013 at 09:20 PM. Reason: clarity
Reply With Quote