After a long break, I’m back to provide updates on the current status and future of this project. We have hit some more roadblocks. In December, planned development was abruptly stopped because the laptop on which I was relying for 3945 testing went dead. It has since been resurrected by capable hands (just tonight), but it’s no longer with me. Anyhow, we’ll go back to the old model of alpha-releases followed by community testing.
Current status of 3945 HAL
I have much less time to spare this year than last, so I must prioritize. In the coming few days, I’ll work on fixing bugs in the 3945 driver (slow speed, heating issues, connection failures). There will be no work on WEP or WPA. The API for writing ciphers was released some months ago as part of VoodooWireless, so if anyone wants to start writing WEP, TKIP or CCMP ciphers meanwhile, it’ll be much appreciated. I’m always available via e-mail if any help is needed. The FreeBSD net80211 architecture already implements these software ciphers. I have mostly based the cipher API on net80211, so it should be a simple port with minor changes. I will only start with WEP/WPA once the majority of bugs in 3945 HAL are fixed so that most people can use unsecured connections stably.
Snow Leopard compatibility
While I was away I got to fiddle with a Macbook with Snow Leopard and Xcode installed. Airport compatibility on Snow Leopard seems to be a distant dream. The SDK no longer includes the crucial apple80211 headers against which VoodooWireless is linked. If it is made available by Apple in the future, all is well and dandy. If not, then the community will have to develop our own GUI for managing the wireless driver. I have no experience with userland graphical tools on OS X, so I will not attempt this myself, but I’m sure there are tons of talented programmers among us who will be able to do it.
About donations
First of all, a big thank you to everyone who has donated in the past and to those who plan to donate in the future. I have updated the current donation figures (around ~€550 in total). Given that donations have dried up (likely due to lack of progress since December), a majority of the effort has been put in, and that I am less likely to have as much time to spend on Project:Camphor this year as I did in 2009, I would like to announce that the release of any drivers or source code will be independent of how much donation I receive from now on. In other words, the bounty system is no more, and we’ll move to regular open-source Voodoo-kernel-like development model. As soon as I have updated drivers, they will be offered for download/testing.
With that said, I would still like to encourage everyone to donate if/when they can. It keeps me motivated and I highly appreciate it.
Source code release
I have decided to gradually release all the source code I have written for this project so far. I began by releasing 2200BG HAL and VoodooWireless SDK. Next, 3945 HAL will be released. If compiling VoodooWireless for Snow Leopard proves difficult for me, its source code will be released so the community can pick up on it.
About 4965/5-series/6-series/1-series Intel WiFi cards
Yes, there will be drivers for all of those. I will begin writing a unified 4965/5xxx driver in the next few days. How long it takes to get it usable remains to be seen. I expect around a month at least.
Those are all the updates for now. Please keep an eye on the Facebook page for shorter blurbs.
