DRV-NET-RTLUSBWifi

Native WiFi drivers for OS/2 and ArcaOS for Realtek USB dongles. Two drivers live in this project:

Dongle	USB id	Driver	Folder
Realtek RTL8188EUS (the common 150 Mbit nano dongles)	0BDA:8179	RTL88EU.OS2	rtl8188eu/
TP-Link Archer T2U Nano (RTL8811AU / RTL8821AU)	2357:011E	RTL8821AU.OS2	rtl8821au/

Both are 16-bit device drivers that talk to the dongle directly over the OS/2 USB stack and show it to the system in two ways:

• a GenMAC-compatible device (WRND32$), so the stock ArcaOS Wireless LAN Monitor (XWLAN) and wpa_supplicant manage it like any other WiFi adapter, and
• an NDIS 2.0.1 MAC, so the OS/2 TCP/IP stack sees an ordinary network interface (lan1).

They are built with open-source tools only (Open Watcom + NASM) and link no IBM code or libraries.

Status: experimental, alpha 0.1.4a3. They work on the author's test machines (real PCs with EHCI and xHCI controllers, the ArcaOS SMP kernel, VirtualBox), but have not been tried widely. See docs/TESTING.md.

What works

• WPA2-PSK (CCMP/AES) association, including the 4-way and group-key handshakes; keys live in the chip's hardware key table and the chip does the encryption and decryption.
• Scanning (the Wireless LAN Monitor lists the networks), signal strength, MAC address from the dongle's eFuse.
• IP over WiFi: DHCP is run by the driver (helper script rtl88eu_ip.cmd); ping, web and ssh work over lan1.
• Wireless LAN Monitor integration: device list, profile with WPA2-PSK, connect and reconnect, status icon.
• Automatic re-association when the access point drops the link.
• The dongle LED: slow blink while searching, steady on when connected, flicker on traffic.
• The SMP kernel: the 0.1.3 drivers serialise USB transfers, the order of transmitted frames and their packet numbers, and the indications into the protocol stack, which is what the 0.1.2 driver lacked (it could trap in AFINETK / SOCKETS under sustained traffic on two or more CPUs).
• RTL8821AU only: signal-based receiver gain, so a strong access point nearby does not overload the receiver.

Install in a minute

TP-Link Archer T2U Nano: copy RTL8821AU.OS2, RTL8821AU.FW and RTL88EU.NIF (from rtl8821au/install) to C:\IBMCOM\MACS; add DEVICE=C:\IBMCOM\MACS\RTL8821AU.OS2 to CONFIG.SYS; bind the adapter in PROTOCOL.INI as in PROTOCOL.INI.example; put the firmware load line from STARTUP.CMD.example into C:\STARTUP.CMD (copy /b C:\IBMCOM\MACS\RTL8821AU.FW \DEV\WRND32$, once per boot); reboot, plug the dongle in and use the Wireless LAN Monitor. RTL8188EU: the same with RTL88EU.OS2 and no firmware step. Only one of the two drivers can be loaded at a time (both use the device name WRND32$): keep one DEVICE= line active. Full steps are in the folder READMEs and in docs/.

Building

Open Watcom 2.0 (16-bit wcc, wlink) and NASM on OS/2; each driver has its own build.cmd. See BUILD.md.

Repository layout

README.md  CHANGELOG.md  BUILD.md  PROVENANCE.md  SECURITY.md  COPYING
docs/        ARCHITECTURE.md  HARDWARE.md  TESTING.md  (and the 0.1.2 audit documents)
rtl8188eu/   src/  install/  bin/        RTL88EU.OS2 (0.1.2 driver + SMP fixes)
rtl8821au/   src/  install/  bin/        RTL8821AU.OS2 + RTL8821AU.FW
tools/       gen_tbl.py                  generator of the RTL8821A register tables

Known issues

• Experimental; expect rough edges. On an SMP kernel, long-term stability is limited to what docs/TESTING.md records. PSD=ACPI.PSD /CPUMASK=1 (one CPU) is a safe fallback.
• RTL8821AU: 5 GHz joins work on the author's router (channel 149) but have had little testing; no HT/VHT rates (802.11g-class throughput, 1-2 MB/s), no per-rate TX power calibration, no power saving, no AP mode. The firmware must be loaded after every boot.
• No WEP/WPA1, no 802.11w, no WPA3.
• One unexplained episode on one test machine (8821AU, SMP, first boot): traffic to one WiFi neighbour failed while other destinations worked; it did not return after a reboot. Details in the testing record.
• Wired and WiFi on the same subnet confuse the routing of any OS/2 machine: test WiFi with the cable unplugged.

If you hit a trap, a photo of the trap screen (module, CS:EIP, CR2, CPU number) and the driver counters (copy \DEV\WRND32$ file) make the best bug report.

Licence

GNU GPL version 2 only (COPYING; SPDX GPL-2.0-only in the sources): the drivers derive from Realtek's Linux drivers rtl8188eu and rtl8821au, which carry that licence. The firmware images are Realtek's binary firmware. Where each file came from, and what is still to be confirmed, is in PROVENANCE.md.

Credits

Project owner and tester: Martin Iturbide (OS2World). Most of the code was written with Claude (Anthropic) as the programming assistant, from the Realtek Linux drivers and public specifications.