= Orinoco =

This [[en/developers/Documentation/Glossary#FullMAC | FullMAC]] driver covers a range of older wireless cards which have varying capabilities. All the cards share a common MAC controller. They differ by firmware (supplied by Agere, Intersil or Symbol) and bus connection.

Depending on the card (and the bus it uses), you will need to load one of the following drivers:
 * airport - An Apple Powerbooks internal Airport.
 * orinoco_cs - Typical PCMCIA card.
 * orinoco_nortel - PC Card connected to a PCI bus via custom PCMCIA-PCI adapter.
 * orinoco_pci - Typical card connected via PCI.
 * orinoco_plx - PCMCIA card connected to a PCI bus via a PLX bridge.
 * orinoco_tmd - PCMCIA card connected to a PCI bus via a TMD chip.
 * spectrum_cs - Driver for Spectrum24 PCMCIA cards.

<<TableOfContents(1)>>

= caveats =
WPA support is only available for Agere based cards, and requires a firmware download on startup. This support was introduced in 2.6.28.

Monitor mode may only be stable with certain firmware revisions.

= supported chips =
 * All the firmware variants are supported.
 * The Hermes I MAC controller is supported.
 * The Hermes II MAC controller is not supported.
 * Support for USB variants is only available in a fork of the main driver.

= available devices =
See the [[/devices | orinoco device list]].

= features =

== working ==
 * Station mode
 * Ad-hoc mode
 * Monitor mode
 * WEP
 * WPA-PSK (TKIP)
== not working yet ==
 * USB based cards
 * AP mode
 * Radiotap headers in monitor mode
== not supported ==
 * WPA2
 * WPA-PSK (CCMP)

= device firmware =
The driver will do its best to work with the firmware it finds on the card. This may restrict the capabilities of the card.

Firmware download to RAM is available for Symbol based spectrum_cs cards, and all Agere based cards (including the !AirPort).

The spectrum_cs cards require two firmware files, symbol_sp24t_prim_fw and symbol_sp24t_sec_fw. Extraction tools (for Windows drivers) can be found in [[http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/orinoco/|orinoco-fwutils]]

The Agere firmware file must be named agere_sta_fw.bin. Extraction tools (for Windows and Apple drivers) can be found in the [[http://repo.or.cz/w/agere_fw_utils.git|agere_fw_utils]] tree. WPA support requires at least firmware v9.42. v9.48 is available from the [[http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=summary|linux-firmware]] tree.

||'''Warning:''' If you download the firmware via gitweb by clicking the blob or raw hyperlinks, the image will be corrupt. This causes an oops on 2.6.28 and 2.6.29. 2.6.30 should simply report a corrupt firmware. You can fix the image by executing {{{recode utf8..iso8859-1 agere_sta_fw.bin}}}||
|| See this [[http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/2/28/154|thread]] for details.||

= WPA support =
If you are using '''wpa_supplicant''' 0.5.7, you will need to use ''ap_scan=2'' mode. In ''ap_scan=1'' mode '''wpa_supplicant''' asks the driver to associate with a specific AP rather than by [[en/developers/Documentation/Glossary#SSID|SSID]]. This has been addressed in later versions of '''wpa_supplicant'''. In either case roaming is controlled by the firmware instead of '''wpa_supplicant'''.

= external links =
 * http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/orinoco/
 * [[http://www.nongnu.org/orinoco | Driver homepage]]
 * [[http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Orinoco.html|Jean Tourhilles orinoco page]]