DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Potential kernel modification to get reliable wifi

Forum member quirky recently made a post attributing the Ralink rt2500 driver's problems to the fact that DSL's kernel has SMP enabled.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=10772
This is interesting. By disabling SMP in the kernel, would the numerous wifi problems with DSL2 reported on the forum be solved?

Anyone have any supporting information?

Many of these reports also state that their wifi cards worked properly under DSL version 1.5

DSL 1.5 uses the 2.4.26 smp enabled kernel.

So I doubt that disabling smp support will solve the specific problem that those people are observing.

But it MIGHT help some others out. I dunno.

Indeed it does appear that the atmelwlandriver requires a non-SMP kernel!

There has been a report on the mailing list of big problems with an SMP kernel, which went away when a non-SMP kernel was used.

The latest readme from the stable sources now also indicates that a non-SMP kernel is required!

Ironically, these wifi drivers may work OK with DSL2+ on non-SMP-capable PC's (just a hunch) because this older hardware can't use SMP routines.

Perhaps what we're seeing is a result of more people using DSL now on newer hardware?

I can confirm that the rt2500 driver causes a hang on my single CPU, non hyper-threaded CPU machine.

EDIT: But after remastering the CD with a non SMP kernel, the same hardware and driver works as expected.

Next Page...
original here.