# Unrecognized Wireless USB stick (Atheros)



## pkc (Sep 26, 2012)

This thread can be considered strongly related to http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=34587, in that I am actively looking for a 'mini' USB wifi dongle. My old, larger one recently broke physically and so I thought I'd give it a try, since a smaller one would be an enormous convenience (despite reduced range).

I actually have two of these that I recently bought, based on their chipsets:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WR125O
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004P8K2JW

And their corresponding entries on wikidevi.com:
http://www.wikidevi.com/wiki/Onkyo_UWF-1
http://www.wikidevi.com/wiki/D-Link_DWA-121

Actually, in retrospect I have no idea why I bought the D-Link, as Realtek8188 is unsupported. Maybe I was thinking of trying ndiswrapper with it, but I didn't get that far.

When I plug in the Onkyo:

I get in /var/log/messages

```
root: Unknown USB device: vendor 0x0cf3 product 0x9271 bus uhub 1
kernel: ugen1.2: <ATHEROS> at usbus1
```

ugen1.2 exists in /dev. I read a bit about the 'mknod' command, but how would I register the resulting device as a network interface? (ath0 or something under ifconfig). I do not seem to see any entry for the device under pciconf -lv, either. (ath is loaded in the kernel)

When I plug in the D-Link, I get a similar message:

```
root: Unknown USB device: vendor 0x2001 product 0x3308 bus uhub1
kernel: ugen1.2: <vendor 0x2001> at usbus1
```

ugen1.2 also exists in /dev in this case.

I thought that the D-Link displayed something else, but whatever, I'll keep it in the post for good measure. Really, I'd just like to get the Onkyo working, since it at least has the right chipset.

Thanks in advance for your time.


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## fbsd1 (Sep 26, 2012)

The message means FreeBSD has no driver for that device. I see that the d-link unit supports the "N" standard. This standard is only 18 months old and has not filtered down into Freebsd drivers. I have same problem with an cisco syslink AE2500 unit. Works fine with "Windows" after installing the driver from the install cd. Tried building a ndis wrapper to no joy. Thing to remember is FreeBSD is not on the bleeding edge with new hardware drivers. We are just SOL.


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## wblock@ (Sep 26, 2012)

It's a problem with chipset support and driver updates.  uath(4) needs work.  802.11n is available with some PCIe Atheros chipsets in FreeBSD 10: http://wiki.freebsd.org/dev/ath(4)/80211n.


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## pkc (Sep 28, 2012)

Thanks for the replies. Interestingly the last adapter I had (which worked fine) was 
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DWA-125-150Mbps-Wireless-Adapter/dp/B002KEA8OM/, which also seems to support N. I guess it's a matter of reverting back to g? I'll just buy another one of those, but if anyone reading has a suggestion for a smaller one that would be supported I would welcome it.

Actually, how about this one?

http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DWA-131-Wireless-N-Adapter-802-11b/dp/B002VJL0OI/

Maybe it'd have a better chance since it's also D-Link, and I could potentially use the windows driver with ndiswrapper..

In any case thanks for the heads up re: the incompatibilities


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## wblock@ (Sep 28, 2012)

Why the desire to have an external USB device?


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