# 8.2 amd64 with Realtek 8188ce 802.11 b/g/n wireless



## ipyakuza (Aug 6, 2011)

Has anyone had any luck getting a Realtek 8188ce driver working on FreeBSD 8.2 amd64? (or at all for that matter)

I know realtek is crap, I just bought a Thinkpad w520, nice laptop but skimped on the wifi (looks like I might have to upgrade it) thinking I would be able to get a working driver going.

I reviewed the HARDWARE.TXT on the DVD and it shows rtl8192 is supported under the rl driver.  I built that and loaded it successfully but didnt work.  I also went the route of grabbing the WinXP64 drivers (.inf and .sys) then used ndisgen to build an ndis driver but that too didnt work (even after a lot of .inf parsing and manual converting to UTF-8).

It "looks" to me like the rtl8192 is packaged in the same rtl8188ce driver from a Windows standpoint.  I saw rtl8192 listed on the FreeBSD rl driver but not the 8188ce.

Anyone else gotten this to work (or have any suggestions?)  Worst case Ill just pony up for a supported card but I just didnt want to deal with external WLAN NIC's (looking to keep it internal for neatness/portability factor).  Thanks in advance.


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## ericchern (Aug 14, 2011)

I have a Thinkpad X220i. my realtek 8188ce wireless also don't work on FreeBSD 8.2 amd64. help me, please.


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## richardpl (Aug 14, 2011)

rl is for ethernet not wireless.

For ndis issues you will need to give more info before I can help you.


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## ipyakuza (Aug 25, 2011)

richardpl said:
			
		

> rl is for ethernet not wireless.
> 
> For ndis issues you will need to give more info before I can help you.





Sure,  basically since I am on amd64 I pulled the Windows XP 64 drivers and generated the ndis driver for them.  No errors in the processing were encountered.  I loaded the module and it crashed one time.  I regenerated them a second time and loaded the module and nothing happened.  Didnt see an ndis listing in the ifconfig output.

Anything specific I can provide you?  Glad to dump any specific details thanks!


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## butcher (Aug 25, 2011)

These adapter aren't supported. You could try to use Windows' driver with NDISulator.


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## ipyakuza (Sep 4, 2011)

butcher said:
			
		

> These adapter aren't supported. You could try to use Windows' driver with NDISulator.



I did, in my last post I noted I downloaded the Windows XP 64 bit drivers (as I am running amd64 and the FreeBSD ndis documentation notes you must use 32-bit XP drivers for 32-bit FreeBSD and 64-bit XP drivers for 64-bit FreeBSD).  The build process completes without errors and *kldload <module>* starts to load the module then about 1 second later panics the kernel and reboots.  

Further analysis I read through the .inf file and confirmed that the rtl8818ce model is noted in there and research on the web it looks like the rtl8192ce and rtl8188ce share the same Windows binary driver.  There is a 32-bit and what seems to be a unique 64-bit.


```
MD5 (WinXP/rtl8192ce.sys) = 123670975a413f6862c061f1c31906e5
MD5 (WinX64/rtl8192ce.sys) = d194145dcb5bc98cda54c0e451707fe0
```

The one tricky part is you have to hand hack/groom/clean-up the .inf text file because windows text files uses the double <CR> while UNIX text files have a single <CR>.  Doing this I used Textpad in Windows to convert to UTF-8 then in FreeBSD had to vi (edit) the file to add the final <CR> at the end of the file.  Maybe I need to clean the file another way...  more to come... :\


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## mauser1891 (Sep 10, 2011)

Anyone got any links as to when the realtek wireless units will/might receive/get supported..?!?


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## longker (Mar 19, 2013)

Is not which out of a solution, I believe a lot of people are wireless card


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## DutchDaemon (Mar 19, 2013)

What?


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## mix_room (Mar 21, 2013)

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=29304
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=31019


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## NODMaster (May 24, 2014)

RTL8191(RTL8192)SE FreeBSD 9.2 amd64 SOLVED 
http://rtl8191-ndis-freebsd-amd64.pages.psl1ght.ru/ (RUS - use google translate)


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## Apt223 (Feb 14, 2017)

I apologize for resurrecting this thread, but the link above is seemingly dead. I have been trying (novice/hobbyist) to get the wireless card working on my HP 2000 DX219 with the RTL8188CE. I had no luck with ndisgen. FreeBSD 11 current, amd64. Any work through/solution would be absolutely appreciated! (please help the newbie!)


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