Re: 802.11g pci success story

Eric,

Thanks for blazing the trail. I think I will buy a new card today and
retire my D-Link DWL-G630. I still cannot get it to work with NDIS.

Cheers!

Mark Phillips

Eric "Shubes" 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 somewhat outdated (Mar'04).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 extensive list, although it too is outdated (Feb'04).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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