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NAME
awi - AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless network driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your
kernel configuration file:
device awi
device wlan
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
if_awi_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The awi driver supports various IEEE 802.11 wireless cards which run AMD
PCnetMobile firmware based on AMD 79c930 controller with Intersil (for‐
merly Harris) PRISM radio chipset. It provides access to 32kb of memory
shared between the controller and the host. All host/device interaction
is via this shared memory, which can be accessed either via PCMCIA memory
space or I/O space. The awi driver encapsulates all IP and ARP traffic
as 802.11 frames.
The driver works both in infrastructure mode and in adhoc (independent
BSS) mode.
In infrastructure mode, it communicates with an Access Point which serves
as a link-layer bridge between an Ethernet and the wireless network. An
access point also provides roaming capability which allows wireless nodes
to move between access points.
In adhoc mode, it communicates peer to peer. Though it is more efficient
to communicate between wireless nodes, the coverage is limited spatially
due to lack of roaming capability.
In addition to these two modes in the IEEE 802.11 specification, the awi
driver also supports a variant of adhoc mode out of spec for DS radio
cards, which makes it possible to communicate with adhoc mode of wi(4)
driver. The NWID does not affect in this mode.
For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).
HARDWARE
Cards supported by the awi driver include:
BayStack 650 1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter
BayStack 660 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Icom SL-200 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Melco WLI-PCM 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
NEL SSMagic 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Netwave AirSurfer Plus
1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter
Netwave AirSurfer Pro
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Nokia C020 WLAN
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Farallon SkyLINE
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the cnw(4) driver.
The DS cards support DS1 and DS2 media types, while the FH cards support
FH1 media type. For each media type, adhoc mediaopt can be used to indi‐
cate the driver to operate in adhoc mode. For DS radio cards,
adhoc,flag0 mediaopt can be used for wi(4) compatible adhoc mode. In
addition to these station modes, hostap mediaopt can be used to create a
host-based access point.
DIAGNOSTICS
awi0: awi_pccard_probe: bad banner: The device failed to initialize its
firmware.
awi0: failed to complete selftest (%s) The device failed to complete its
self test. In some circumstances, resetting device after power on fails.
Re-inserting the card or down-then-up interface may be helpful.
awi0: transmit timeout The device failed to generate an interrupt to
acknowledge a transmitted packet.
awi0: failed to lock interrupt The system was unable to obtain the lock
to access shared memory.
awi0: command %d failed %x The device failed to complete the request
from the system.
arp(4), card(4), cnw(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), pccard(4), wi(4),
wlan(4), ifconfig(8)
Am79C930 PCnet Mobile Single-Chip Wireless LAN Media Access Controller,
http://www.amd.com.
HISTORY
The awi device driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.5.
AUTHORS
The initial version of the awi driver was written by Bill Sommerfeld
〈sommerfeld@netbsd.org〉. Then the awi driver module was completely
rewritten to support cards with DS phy and to support adhoc mode by
Atsushi Onoe 〈onoe@netbsd.org〉.