On Tue, 14 Aug 2007, John W. Linville wrote: > On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 07:04:10AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > so, is there, somewhere, a set of instructions that actually > > represents a solution, and which doesn't contain the phrase "and if > > that doesn't work, try ..." somewhere in the middle? > > For the BCM4318? No. Some 4318-based cards work w/ one driver, > some with another, and some with neither. Complain to Broadcom, > or send some money to support the reverse engineering effort. > > http://bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net/ > > Sorry, but it is as simple as that. Perhaps we just shouldn't ship > any driver at all until we have one that works for _you_? sure, that works for me. :-) seriously, though, the hassle i've had with trying to get this to work is another example of what i've found is a general shortcoming of a lot of online documentation i've run across for years now. most online HOWTOs/tutorials are of the form: * do step 1 * do step 2 ... * do step n there, you're done. if it works, great. if it doesn't, well, sorry. what those recipes *don't* do is explain, first of all, *why* you're doing each step and, even more importantly, what you can do *after* each step to verify that things are progressing correctly and you're on the right track. above, you point out that some 4318-based cards work with one driver, some with another driver and so on. fair enough. but is there a way, as i'm working my way thru the configuration, to know ASAP whether it will work for *me*? because if there isn't, then all i can do is go through the full configuration, only to find out at the end that it doesn't work, at which point, i'm not sure if it's *my* fault or whether i really have a driver/card mismatch of some kind. as i'm sure you can appreciate, it's maddening when you read someone's recipe that just *worked* for them, and fails utterly for *me*. so i go back and start from scratch and try it again, assuming i screwed up, never realizing that it really *isn't* my fault after all (at least with the setup i have). in short, it would be nice to see some online documentation that will explain *either* how to get something working, *or* explain how to tell if it just can't be done in my situation, so i can stop trying the same thing over and over, and move on to other alternatives. rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA http://fsdev.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page ========================================================================
