Stephen H worked with me to test a couple versions of the driver today and we are reporting success.
Association works. Data transfer works. Surfing works, chatting works. Almost a year’s work seems to have paid off. You can follow the development on the Facebook page as usual, there are a couple more screenshots there.
What exactly works
To be more specific about what works so far (and keep in mind we need more data points soon):
The 3945 driver can scan for all .11b/g networks, connect to open (unsecured) wireless networks, receive data from the access point at any speed and transmit data to the access point at a fixed 11Mbps rate, allowing normal internet access.
As you can see the current “held-together-by-duct-tape” version of the driver is somewhat limited. The reasons are as follows:
- I don’t have a .11a router and have never used it, so the support for .11a mode is sketchy at best, and the 3945 HAL ignores it.
- The WEP cipher is implemented but has some bugs preventing it from working properly.
- The WPA cipher does not yet exist.
- The rate is fixed at 11mbps because I have not yet implemented the dynamic rate scaling algorithm based on transmission characteristics
What’s left to do
- WEP and WPA
- Dynamic rate scaler to allow use of all transmission speeds from 1Mbps to 54Mbps (packets can be received at any rate)
- Dynamic transmit power scaling based on hardware temperature
- Bug fixing, Ad-hoc mode etc.
Out of these, I will implement the 2nd and 3rd features before uploading a beta version. WEP is next, and then WPA will probably be a whole project of its own.
Bounty pot
Since the driver finally works, it’s time to start filling the bounty pot. The time spent so far including everything is 434 hours. That comes to around €8680. I’m thinking of releasing the beta as soon as donations reach €2500, and then working through the remaining features/bug fixes until it reaches whatever the total for that time is. I hope this is a reasonable condition.
Feel free to voice your concerns in the comments.
Source code release
I am planning to release the VoodooWireless SDK, the Intel 2200BG driver HAL source code, and an empty template project for developing HALs. This will probably be some time in the next 10 days (I need to write some documentation and clean up the code a bit). The 3945 HAL will also be released in due time.
