laptop wlan card datasheet

[itchy8me]

Hey guys,

Im searching for a datasheet of the ar5bmb5 wireless card for laptops. I want to use it to make a wireless backup station and need to know what the pinouts are. Searched google and alldatsheets.com but alas, have found 0. Someone here maybe know where i can find it.. if i can find it, and while im at it, anybody know where i can find the datasheets for the pinouts of hardrives?

kind regards,
Wernher

 

[Sceadwian]

It's not a chip it's a laptop card you won't find it listed... well anywhere. The interface is likley cardbus and you'd have to reverse engineer the drivers to determine the protocol the card uses. The scope of using such a card in the way you're trying to is probably about 100 times more complex than the scope of your entire project. The pinouts for IDE hard drives are easily found on Google.

 

[itchy8me]

thanks for the quick reply. ya i know its no IC, I've found pin out datasheets for components before, i guess I'm overlooking the whole proprietary hardware software thing.

considering you mention reverse engineering, would an open source driver like madwifi give any clues as to what the functions of the pins are? Any ideas on how i would do that?

kind regards,
Wernher

 

[Sceadwian]

That's what I'm trying to tell you itchy, you won't find that anywhere. Find out what bus the card uses and research that for your physical device interface (as I said it's likely cardbus) after that you need to reverse engineer the drivers. Look for linux drivers as they're usually opensource. Doing this on a small linux box might be practical, but not by creating custom hardware it's just not practical.

 

[itchy8me]

thanks for the advice. . it's taken into deep consideration. i'm going to look to see if i can find any wireless lan IC's where the pinouts are given.

 

[Sceadwian]

That's what I'm trying to tell you itchy, you could look for a hundred years and you'll never find one. ALL laptop cards use a hardware interface, I think Cardbus is pretty much the only standard out there right now. That hardware interface is standard but the way the firmware on the card in question itself communicates with the operating system is highly device dependent and not generally available to the public. There are linux drivers for the card you mentioned, I'd start there with the code for those drivers. You really have to be a decent software coder and know a thing or two about hardware to do what you're requesting. A simple request for pinouts isn't gonna cut it =) It's like asking what the pinouts for a grand piano masterpiece are, everyone can plainly see the keys, good luck playing it.