[Prism54-users] problems with SMC2802W

[Nicolai Langfeldt]

Hi,

Got a SMC2802W (PCI card) here.

With patch-2.4.23-rc3+prism54-CVS-2003-11-21 I get jiffies left = 90 
messages.  I switched to 11-11 and 11-13 instead because I found a 
number of positive postings mentioning these drivers. But the do not 
quite get me there.  The driver installes in the kernel.  It iwconfigs - 
I guess - reasonably - but it never manages to attach itself to my 
existing wi-fi network - it just keeps cyceling the channels it seems. 
iwlist does see my wi-fi though.

# modprobe prism54
# dmesg
...
Loaded prism54 driver, version 1.0.2.2
eth2: resetting device...
eth2: uploading firmware...
eth2: firmware upload & reset successful!
eth2: prism54_mib_init()
eth2: done with prism54_mib_init()!
...
# iwconfig eth2
eth2      PRISM Duette  Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457GHz
           Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00  Bit Rate:0kb/s 
Sensitivity=20/200
           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
           Encryption key:off
           Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:240
           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
# dmesg | tail
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12
TRAP: oid 0x18000001, device 4, flags 0x0 length 12

# iwlist eth2 scanning
eth2      Scan completed :
           Cell 01 - Address: 02:56:9F:1D:65:51
                     ESSID:"LangfeldtWLLan"
                     Frequency:2.457GHz
                     Quality:55/0  Signal level:-43 dBm  Noise level:-98 dBm
           Cell 02 - Address: 00:0A:04:99:1C:02
                     ESSID:"don"
                     Frequency:2.462GHz
                     Quality:9/0  Signal level:-89 dBm  Noise level:-98 dBm

Cell 01 is my wi-fi.  It's based on 11Mbps Orinoco cards at present.  I 
don't have a real base station, only a Linux firewall with a orinoco 
card in ad-hoc mode (which I plan to replace with SMC2802W as soon as I 
know it works for me :-).  I try to set the prism54 card into ad-hoc 
mode, but it does not seem to take:

# iwconfig eth2 mode ad-hoc
# iwconfig eth2
eth2      PRISM Duette  Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.417GHz
           Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00  Bit Rate:0kb/s 
Sensitivity=20/200
           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
           Encryption key:off
           Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:11
           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

No other iwconfig commands like essid or freq seems to take either. 
Looking at some postings here I compiled the 2003-11-13 driver as a 
module with rc1 kernel and _no_ ACPI support.  When I then loaded the 
prism54 driver the whole machine froze hard.

This is the configuration of the Orinoco card on a client.  The mode of 
the orinoco clients does not make any difference, either "managed" or 
"ad-hoc" works.

# iwconfig eth1
eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"LangfeldtWLLan"  Nickname:"HERMES I"
           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457GHz  Access Point: 02:56:9F:1D:65:51
           Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3
           Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Encryption key:off
           Power Management:off
           Link Quality:86/92  Signal level:-63 dBm  Noise level:-121 dBm
           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
           Tx excessive retries:4  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

The motherboard I'm testing this on is a Abit IC7-G with a HT capable P4 
CPU - but it is not running on more than one "cpu" currently.

Any hints? Anyone that have managed to navigate such problems before?

Regards,
   Nicolai Langfeldt