Re: 802.11g pci success story

Nice job Eric. And very timely, for me.

Gene

On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 13:06:15 -0700, Eric "Shubes <plug@shubes.net> wrote:

> Hats and Horns! (well, sort of)
> I managed to get a pci wireless-g card working (finally), and want to
> report my findings.
>
> First and foremost, the most difficult task by far was finding and
> acquiring a card that had any chance of working natively. It turns out,
> you often can't tell what's what from the card's model number, as many
> vendors use (very) different chipsets in different production runs, then
> continue to use the same packaging with the same model number for
> distribution. At best the vendor will use a sticker designating a
> different part number, but that is of little value since the part number
> is rarely used for identification purposes. For example, you can order
> an SMC2802W (as I did), but you've no way of knowing whether you'll get
> the V1 that works, or the V2 that doesn't (yet?), and in this case they
> both even use the PrismGT chip! The only way to accurately tell what a
> card actually has is to use the lspci command after it's installed.
> Thank you very much (NOT) Mr. card vendor! Now, on with the story.
>
> I already had a Linksys WMP54G working under W98SE (dual booting w/
> FC2). The lspci command reported this card as having a Broadcom chipset
> (Broadcom isn't Linux friendly, to say the least), so the only way to
> get that working would be to use NDIS along with the windows drivers.
> That 'solution' has several drawbacks, noted at
> http://acx100.sourceforge.net/ndis_cludge.html, so I proceeded to find a
> card that is supported on Linux.
>
> The PRISM(R) chipset is reported to have REAL vendor Linux support (the
> 2.6.8 kernel even says so in the log!), so I proceeded in that
> direction. The table of cards at http://prism54.org/supported_cards.php
> was quite helpful, although somewhat outdated (Mar'04). I also referred
> to the Wlan-ng table of cards (house of cards?) at
> http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz, a quite extensive
> list, although it too is outdated (Feb'04).
>
> I proceeded to shop stores in the Phoenix area, and was unable to find
> ANY pci card containing the prism54 chipset, based on the data in these
> tables. I was especially surprised that Fry's didn't have one, although
> I must give them credit. They were willing to open every kind of pci
> wireless-g card they had, looking for the (becoming mythical) prism54
> chip. (Note, on some cards you can see the chip itself and tell who made
> it, providing the vendor hasn't covered it up with a sheet metal cage.)
>
> Delayed but not discouraged, I went online to shop. After doing some
> price comparisons, I decided to purchase from newegg.com, as their
> prices were competetively low, and I've had very good experience buying
> from them in the past. My first choice was the Hawking HWP54G, as it was
> reported to contain the Prism54 chipset, and I've had no problems with
> Hawking products (nic, switch) in the past. Unfortunately, that card was
> out of stock, so I opted to have them notify me when it came in. As a
> second choice, I ordered the the SMC2802W, as it appeared to have a
> large degree of success, and all models contained the PrismGT
> (1260:3890) chipset. It shipped the same day, and I received it two days
> later. In the meantime, the next day I received notice that the HWP54G
> was in stock, so I ordered that one too (I could use it if need be).
>
> The SMC2802W was recognized by kudzu (FC2), so that was encouraging. I
> proceeded to follow the directions at
> http://mysite.verizon.net/winterz/doc/prism54_fc2.txt while referring to
> the wireless tools documentation at
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html. First
> there was one FC-specific bug (request_firmware() failed for 'isl3890')
> that needed fixing (commented out 4 lines containing "hotplug" from
> /etc/rc.d/init.d/network script, it was leftover from older hotplug
> version). Then I was getting a "set bitrate failed" (Auto) error, so I
> removed that configuration setting (letting it default). At that point,
> I stumbled across the same bug as the one reported at
> http://prism54.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=72. As it turned
> out, I had acquired the V2 model, as verified by lspci (same
> vendor:device, but different subsystem id). Since this bug's severity is
> listed as "enhancement", I decided that this card needed to be returned.
> :(
>
> In the meantime, the HWP54G had arrived, so I proceeded with its
> installation (at the same time, removing the SMC2802W V2). This card was
> not seen by kudzu the first time up, why I don't know (kudzu did
> recognize it on a subsequent boot). I checked lspci to see what chipset
> the card contained. Egads, it's a TI ACX111! Not to be dismayed, I went
> to http://acx100.sourceforge.net/ to see what was up with that chipset.
> "Craig's Acx100 Guide for Linux" at
> http://www.houseofcraig.net/acx100_howto.php was extremely helpful in
> getting me going. The driver is still extremely experimental (especially
> for the ACX111), so I was a bit leery. It is only available as source,
> but Craig's Guide is very detailed, so much so that even a newbie could
> get it installed. I proceeded to follow the instructions. Everything
> went very well, until I got to the point of installing the firmware.
> This part of the guide is somewhat sketchy when it comes to the ACX111,
> as it was written originally for the ACX100 (wireless-b, I presume). The
> driver files mentioned here weren't on the CD that came with the card.
> I grep'd through the ACX100 "package" files for the names of the
> firmware files I did have, and found it referenced in the README file,
> along with some c code. I read the README (should've done that
> earlier), and it clarified which firmware file I could use, so I
> installed it. At this point, Linux was apparently talking successfully
> to the card (iwconfig looked ok), but it wasn't connecting to my access
> point (Linksys WRT54G). I proceeded to open up the AP a bit (less
> secure, but what the heck) to see if they'd connect. I turned WEP off,
> disabled MAC filtering, and enabled both g,b rates. Low and behold, it
> connected. Wheee!
>
> I entered the card's mac address in the AP's mac filter list and turned
> mac filtering back on, it still worked (no leechers). I bumped the rate
> up to 54M on the card and it still worked, but only when AP is set to
> "mixed" (b and g), not G-only (that's odd). Then I tried DHCP
> configuration, no go. I think that's because the acx start_net script
> doesn't follow FC conventions (device is wlanx instead of ethx). Also,
> WEP isn't fully implemented for the ACX111 yet (ACX100 is), so I'll have
> to wait a bit (or write the code myself?) before I can use encryption
> again, but I can live with that for now.
>
> BL, I have a bit of tweaking to do to get it working automagically on
> startup, but at least it's working and is usable (enough for me). I'll
> be reporting bugs and keeping in close contact with the acx developers
> for a while!



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