Mastodawn

This shit just fucking *exhausts* me

I'm very much a "hardware guy". I am worthless at writing software. But I can (and do) bore people to tears with hardware minutiae all day. I've tripped over and summarily *forgotten* more hardware quirks than most normal people will ever have to reckon with

But now people who are not "hardware people" can get a plausible sounding answer to punt an email back over the fence about why not to do some trivial thing because they don't understand the ecosystem

Computers are an unfathomably BROAD topic. You aren't going to know everything. Not even close to it. Even if you're a "generalist" you're going to have pretty deep knowledge of specific things that are important to you

But that leaves you vulnerable and blind to the things you don't know but "sound correct" in a bubble

Y'know. Like the fucking slop machine is specifically *really good at doing*

Also for those playing at home. No, CNVi is not a problem (usually)

If you're on an 8th gen (2017 vintage) or newer Intel chip? It just works (TM)

If you're on AMD or ARM or something? Yeah then it won't work. It's an Intel chip communicating over an Intel protocol to an Intel CPU only

Why? Because Intel are a bunch of dipshits like that and thought "Centrino" needed to rise like an annoying phoenix

Do yourself a favor and just buy a Qualcomm or a Mediatek chip instead

(not Realtek though)

https://people.freebsd.org/~wpaul/RealTek/3.0/if_rl.c

Also on that tangent. Seriously. Never buy Realtek anything. They've been absolute trash since the 1990's

Here's what a FreeBSD driver developer had to say about them back in the day

Pauliehedron ✅

@CursedSilicon Is it even worse than the Marvell in the Surface? Those things gave me such headaches I quit doing anything with enterprise wifi if they were part of the deployed user base.

@pauliehedron Marvell actually sold off all their Wi-Fi stuff to NXP many years ago!

...No idea if it's improved since then!

Pauliehedron ✅

@CursedSilicon I just remember seeing the 100 lot price was like $3 when I was working with Cisco TAC on trying to get the damn things to roam. Surface was over a grand, I know a dollar more at scale is a lot, but MS could have afforded a slightly more premium chip and still kept margins healthy I suspect.

Tanaki (pumpkin spice loaf)4h ago

@CursedSilicon i had to write a lot of low-level code for one of their chips (a couple years ago) and i can confirm this 1000%

Snep

@CursedSilicon Side note, definitely not from AI but from my own (painful) experience wirth CNVi chips: Your motherboard and chipset also need to be designed to support CNVi M.2 modules and I've had a few laptops and desktop motherboards over the years that didn't, at or post-8th gen Core i CPU. I'm sure laptops fare better than desktops, though CVNi is still more annoying than it's worth dealing with over the PCIe+USB counterparts

@snep Wait. It requires specific hardware support on top? Who the hell is even using it then (and why?)

Snep

@CursedSilicon Mmyup! IIRC even the official Intel article about CNVi has a disclamer at the bottom about only working with specifically designed boards which support CNVi.

I assume it's half a cent cheaper to throw a few more transistors into the PCH and add a couple of extra PCB traces or whatever the actual hardware change may be combined with a very stripped down wireless card that's basically just some RF magic than to use a full PCIe and USB WiFi/Bluetooth module

Snep

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000026155/wireless.html

@CursedSilicon Ah yes:

> These CRFs can only be used with select Intel processors/chipset on systems/motherboards that is specifically designed to support it.

Thanks Intel, very cool.

Explains the Intel® Integrated Connectivity using CNVi and a companion RF module.

Intel

@CursedSilicon nodds in agreement

@CursedSilicon I'd literally call up HR and tell them that this bs needs to stop.

You don't tell people how to do software and
They should stop nosing in your field.

#NotLegalAdvice

@kkarhan It's a company of a dozen people and she's the Sysadmin. I'm also "the new guy"

Arguably, I build the fucking things. So I better have a decent knowledge of hardware. But it feels like a tedious "nerd fight" every time I opine on hardware at all

(I've already been sat down and told to stop asking about touching or setting up infrastructure. Very "stay in your lane" kind of energy)

@CursedSilicon Then I guess talking to HR is unavoidable at a certain point.

Either to remediate this or
to hand in notice amidst someone finding greener pastures…\

@kkarhan I mean we don't have HR. We have my boss who is the COO.

I deeply enjoy where I've landed, work wise. It's just the intellectual tug-of-war with the "one other tech person" is kinda tiring

@CursedSilicon then maybe have a word with the COO about that…

@CursedSilicon also even if there's no CNVi or M.2 slot, one can get AX2xx chipsets and successors from several sources as #MiniPCIe cards…

That'll limit those to 1 PCIe lane but very few setups will ever have enough consistent throughput to be able to measure the difference - espechally outside spechal laboratories...

@kkarhan Both the 200 and 201 come in the same M.2 formfactor. They just speak CNVI instead of PCI-E on the bus

Which means it won't work AT ALL on AMD machines (it won't even *show up* if you lspci it)

But this company has shipped 100% Intel systems for 20~ years now. It is literally *not a problem* for us. But it was such a tedious "nuh uh" pushback moment

@CursedSilicon yeah, then that's obviously a non-tangential argument since someone in the hardware departmebt like you would've been told IF there was a need to accomondate other CPU vendors.

Personally, I would, but that's obviously out if scope and I can totally understand why…

Michael Dwyer 1d ago

@CursedSilicon Is it off base to skim the Wikipedia article on CNVi and immediately get chills? I'm thinking, "Oh god... WinModems are coming for wireless..."