Broadcom Wireless Support for the Nightly builds

Feedback Hardware
1

Hi,

I am currently running the Nightly Builds on my MacBook 4,1 which has a BroadCom BCM4321 wireless adapter but no driver is assigned to it.

According to this site


FreeBSD has had support for this and other models of BroadCom adapters since FreeBSD 12.

Here are further details on the BroadCom driver improvements that the developer has on his site.

https://landonf.org/code/freebsd/Broadcom_WiFi_Improvements.20180122.html

Does this mean that Haiku can have this support as well?

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The Broadcom drivers require a “backplane” driver separate from the main driver, which is a setup no other WiFi driver needs. It also needs some bits of the KOBJ system that we don’t really implement. So, in order to port that, I would need a considerable amount of time, and hardware with it.

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What kind of hardware would be suitable? Any Mac since the Intel switch? They should use a Broadcom chipset, I guess :slight_smile:
Mac hardware is durable and longer in use. But at some point in time the OS support stops although the hardware is in a good shape and well functioning. Hence it would be great to offer Haiku as an alternative. (I suppose that’s what Elementary OS is aiming for.)
If there’s actually the willingness to code the drivers, I would be ready to try to get hands on some hardware that I could donate.

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Good news is not all Macs use Broadcom; the AirPort card in my 2006 MacBook is Atheros based as one example. Definitely agree; Mac hardware is the best out there.

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So, the Atheros chipsets work? Good to know. According to Wikipedia all Macs since “late 2008” (source) use Broadcom chipsets. The teardowns made by iFixIt describe the chipsets found in the hardware.

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Here at home we have an old MacBook (early 2008, I believe) and an old MacBook Pro (mid 2007). The MacBook Pro has Wi-Fi, but the MacBook only gets internet access through an Ethernet connection. I don’t remember anymore what chipsets they have, but probably one is Atheros and the other eis Broadcom.

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Yes and no. I have to agree with @victordomingos that my MacBook only gets a solid Internet connection via Ethernet. The wireless card is detected on my late 2006 MacBook and does manage to connect – but the connection isn’t stable and drops often to the point it is not really reliable. It’s generally a better idea to just use Ethernet, either by bridging with a Mac that does have working wireless through Sharing preferences on the Mac or otherwise by connecting directly to a wired connection. Hope this clears things up a bit.

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Well, Mac hardware currently has a lot of other problems (EFI booting problems, frequent KDLs, etc.) so WiFi drivers alone are not going to be much help.

I think I actually have some hardware here with a Broadcom WiFi chip, so if there really is interest I may already have something to test with.

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I also have a netbook with a BCM43xx WiFi chip, so I’m also interested in this working in Haiku.

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Did you have a chance to test those Broadcom WiFi back then? I’m looking into installing Haiku on a MacBook with the BCM43602 adapter which is supported by OpenBSD but AFAIU not by Haiku, right?

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What’s the PCI ID? It looks like it’s supported, but Broadcom’s model numbers are extremely confusing, so without a specific PCI ID it’s hard to say.

If it’s indeed supported by the OpenBSD bwfm driver, then yes, I can port that over and you should get support that way.

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14E4:43BA (fwiw, subvendor:subdeviceid is 106b:0152)

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You can use listdev in Terminal Haiku

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Yes, that’s one of the supported IDs in the OpenBSD bwfm driver.

Let me know when you have Haiku up and running on your laptop and I’ll work on porting the driver.

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I’m also interested in the driver as I have a MacBook Pro Early 2013 with Broadcom 14e4:43a0 ready to test.

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I don’t think this will help.

The cards in those Macbooks are extremely difficult to use on Linux and have no drivers on any BSD unless using the Linux drivers as FreeBSD can do.

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https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/sys/dev/ic/bwfm.c

https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/sys/dev/ic/bwfmreg.h

https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/sys/dev/ic/bwfmvar.h

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43A0 is BCM4360, which isn’t handled by any OpenBSD driver. I don’t think this is a “fullmac” device (the class of hardware bwfm handles.)

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Apologies for the long-overdue response. I finally have Haiku installed on my MacBook Pro 2015. If you can port the driver for the 14E4:43BA device I’d gladly test it.

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For the reference, here’s the Trac ticket I created:
https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/18906

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