[Prism54-users] Allnet ALL0271 (Mini)PCI works - mostly...

[Richard Atterer]

Hello,

I can report that I got my Allnet ALL0271 to work with the prism54 kernel 
patch, both under Linux 2.4.23 and 2.6.0-test11. The lspci output is at the 
end of this mail.

The card is a PCI card on which a standard miniPCI card is mounted below
some metal shielding. The shielding can be removed without soldering, so
this card may be of interest for people who want to replace their
notebook's Centrino miniPCI card with one supported by Linux.

Initially, I had some problems getting the card to work, probably
IRQ-related AFAICT. On one occasion, the kernel reported an unhandled IRQ
request even before the prism54 module was loaded, and disabled the card's
IRQ. Subsequently, the driver was unable to use the card (the usual "queue
empty, retrying (jiffies left =...").

The card seems to forget any settings made with iwconfig in certain
situations: For example, after "iwconfig eth0 essid xyz" and "ifconfig eth0
1.2.3.4 up", the essid is no longer set - similar for mode, key etc.
Furthermore, my scripts need to sleep for a few seconds after a firmware
upload, otherwise anything set by iwconfig tends to be ignored.

However, my biggest problem ATM is that the card locks up completely under
high load.  I've successfully been using it over a period of many hours
with 768k DSL traffic, but when I transfer data at maximum speed (from a
Netgear WG511GR, which BTW works fine), I can only transfer about 50-100MB
of data (at 2 to 2.5 MByte/s), then the card abruptly stops working.

In this state, I keep getting "NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out"
messages (but no other messages, not even "queue empty, retrying"). Worst
of all, the *only* way to recover from this is a complete power cycle
(switching the machine off and on) - removing/reloading the prism54 module
or even a reset of the machine is not sufficient. :-/

Cheers,

  Richard

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00:0c.0 Class 0280: 1260:3890 (rev 01)

00:0c.0 Network controller: Harris Semiconductor D-Links DWL-g650 A1 (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Unknown device 16a5:1605
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 80 (2500ns min, 7000ns max), Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 19
        Region 0: Memory at da800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold+)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-