Solved: Haiku supported m.2 WLAN card

Feedback Hardware
1

Hi Guys,

I’ve got the chance to replace my all-around Haiku laptop (x200s) with something faster, what would be a big boost in my porting work.
The T440s compatibility looks promising, but it got unsupported m.2 WLAN card (Intel 7260).

Do you happen to know any supported m.2 card to switch with? Whitelist removal seems to be tricky, but maybe i can do it.

Or do you happen to have an T440s? Is it possible to use an m.2->minipcie adapter to use a known working WLAN card? Is there enough place around it?

Or can you point a well compatible modern laptop with working sound/Jack sensing/WLAN?

Thanks!

2

If nothing else works, there is always the option of using an ethernet to wifi bridge. In my case I use a TP-Link WR703N for this, which is small and powered over USB.

For reference, my current machine is a Dell Vostro v131, but it is not really modern anymore. Still newer than the X200s, I think.

3

True, i forgot about your small white-blue box. That could be at least a workaround. It is powered trough USB, right? Does it provides a webpage dfor configuration, or configuration trough ssh/telnet/whatever required?

4

The default firmware for mine had a webpage, but it was in chinese. I installed OpenWRT and now I get only a command line interface (because of lack of space in the flash to install a web UI - it would be possible but not easy).

The OpenWRT webpage has a list of supported devices, and filtering on “travel router” gives some similar ones:
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864?dataflt[0]=device%20type_%3DTravel%20Router

5

Here i would collect the info what i found:

According to the intel driver sources in the Haiku tree the only intel chip which supported AND available as m.2 is the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235.

It doesn’t means it will work, it is just supported as pcie device. It should work if the chip doesn’t need a special firmware, but no guarantee.

6

m.2 is just a connector and form factor. This means it has no consequences on drivers and chipsets. It can carry either USB3 or PCI-express signals.

There is no reason older wifi chipsets wouldn’t be available, but I don’t know if anyone actually did manufacture a card like that.

7

So, after assembled the laptop with the new card, Haiku did not recognized it, but a small patching here and there solved the problem. Now it works really well, and the changes already in Gerrit: https://review.haiku-os.org/#/c/125/

So this is a tested, working NGFF card wich works with Haiku.

But my patch needs to be merged first. UPDATE: merged.

A bit info about the card:
Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6235 [8086:088f] (rev 02)

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8

Congratulations, you’re now a driver developer! :smiley:

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9

Just an FYI the original card you had apparently is supported on FreeBSD 11… maybe its just a matter of getting the correct firmware from freebsd and also making sure the driver is updated.

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/intel-7260.55061/

10

“just a matter of” is unfortunately not that easy. Since FreeBSD made some changes to their driver interface between versions 9 and 11, we have to adjust our compatibility layer to match. We can’t just pop in the sources from FreeBSD and rebuild.
It is probably nothing impossible, but someone has to sit down and figure it out and fix all build issues, implementing the missing parts.

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11

So, let me introduce an almost fully supported Haiku machine: the Thinkpad T440s.

I got it with the following specs:

  • i7 4600U
  • 8Gb RAM
  • 14.0" FHD (1920x1080) IPS touch display
  • Intel HD Graphics 4400
  • 2 batteries (external and internal)
  • Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260
  • Trackpoint
  • LAN

What works out of the box:

  • display with native resolution
  • batteries (both of them)
  • audio out with nativ driver (needs to restart the media_server before it really works, i do it with UserBootscript)
  • touchpad/clickpad : bit strange, but does the job. No right click btw. (Ctrl + left click as workaround, or external mouse)
  • Touchscreen, no click btw.
  • LAN

What doesn’t works oob:

  • WLAN: It is possible to swap it to a supported Intel 6235 NGFF card, but only with BIOS version 2.36 which got no whitelist, or with BIOS whitelist patch (not for beginners!) I had luck with the BIOS version. Be careful, BIOS downgrade not possible without external tools (SPI programmer).

So i got it fully working with small workarounds. I don’t really like the Touchpad, so i plan to replace it with the one from T450. Will report back about my experiences.

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12

Yeah my bad, I was thinking we were synced with FreeBSD mostly still… I think I did hear about perhaps some of the Ethernet drivers being in sync since they were easier to do that then Wifi?

Anyway shouldn’t the clickpad be registering left right clicks based on the zones where you are touching when the click occurs? I guess haiku would have to implement multitouch to make that work as well as software support for clickpads.

https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/9545

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Yes, the wired drivers have been updated (at least some of them), but not yet the wireless ones.

And yes, clickpad support is missing and it requires our driver to do multitouch management. We need some signal processing to track the different fingers and associate one with the mouse pointer, and the others with special gestures (clicks on buttons, etc).

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