Three months ago I wrote post about situation of my Nokia 770 tablet. Today I looked how situation looks with non-Maemo systems.
Flashed recent Poky Linux build. Device booted into nice Sato desktop which I am familiar with. As it was expected — no WiFi support in base system. Why? Licensing problem.
Nokia tablets WiFi stack in implemented by:
- firmware loaded to the chip at runtime (when interface is brought up)
- closed source wi-fi stack in module umac.ko
- open source glue layer cx3110x which forwards packets between firmware and umac.ko over SPI and implements support for linux wireless extensions API.
We also use 2.6.18 kernel from OS2007 instead of 2.6.16.27 from OS2006. With some hacking on “umac.ko” module from 2.6.16.27 + patching “cx3110x” driver I got module which loads on my device. But then other problem appeared — WPA Supplicant is unable to connect to WiFi interface due to lack of wireless extensions support. And Nokia implementation is closed source :(
On IRC I got information that there is a patch which adds WE18 support into cx3110x driver. Fetched, applied but situation is the same:
[ 7206.999359] umac: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
[ 7210.030334] CX3110x chip variant: STLC4370
[ 7210.319458] CX3110x: firmware version: 2.13.0.0.a.13.14
[ 7210.319580] Loaded CX3110x driver, version 0.8
root@nokia770:~# wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: No such device
and then reboot :(
So it looks like my 770 will get Maemo OS2006 again and will end it’s life as console for simple games + music player. Too bad that it hard to make it work with other systems.
BTW: I wonder why Maemo.org forbids GoogleBot… It is really hard to find Maemo related things with Google :(
UPDATE: Niels Breet (X-Fade on #maemo) pointed me to maemo webdevs discussion which clarify that GoogleBot index Maemo websites. My fault — sorry guys. It is hard to find current informations in wiki but there are plans to move to MediaWiki and reorganize content.