I’m trying to get an embedded system – it’s a ‘486 with ISA bus only (2.4.18 kernel, busybox, uClibc) running with a wireless PCMCIA card to link to an access point.

It’s taken me several days to get the PCMCIA interface to recognise the Wireless Lan card – including increasing setup_delay in pcmcia_core. But I now have something looking like…

# cat /tmp/stab
Socket 0: empty
Socket 1: Linksys WPC11 11Mbps 802.11b WLAN Card
1 network orinoco_cs 0 eth0
# lsmod
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
orinoco_cs 3908 1
orinoco 29428 0 [orinoco_cs]
hermes 3108 0 [orinoco_cs orinoco]
ds 6036 2 [orinoco_cs]
i82365 11728 2
pcmcia_core 35328 0 [orinoco_cs ds i82365]
doc 146192 1
# iwconfig eth0
eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"Wireless" Nickname:"Prism I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457 GHz Access Point: 00:40:33:AF:F6:2B
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off
Encryption key: off
Power Management: off
Link Quality=92/92 Signal level=5/153 Noise level=117/153
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

The card does see the access point and the access point does see the card.

The problem is I can’t ping, and the log file contains stuff like…

Aug 27 05:32:05 rhobert kern.warn kernel: eth0: Tx timeout! Resetting card.
Aug 27 05:32:05 rhobert kern.err kernel: eth0: error -5 reading frame header. Frame dropped.
Aug 27 05:32:05 rhobert kern.err kernel: eth0: Error -110 writing packet header to BAP
Aug 27 05:32:05 rhobert kern.err kernel: eth0: Error -110 writing packet header to BAP
Aug 27 05:32:05 rhobert kern.info kernel: eth0: Tx error, status 4 (FID=0128)
Aug 27 05:32:06 rhobert kern.info kernel: eth0: Tx error, status 4 (FID=014F)
Aug 27 05:32:09 rhobert kern.info kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Aug 27 05:32:09 rhobert kern.warn kernel: eth0: Tx timeout! Resetting card.
Aug 27 05:33:10 rhobert kern.info kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Aug 27 05:33:10 rhobert kern.warn kernel: eth0: Tx timeout! Resetting card.
Aug 27 05:33:10 rhobert kern.info kernel: eth0: Tx error, status 4 (FID=0128)
Aug 27 05:33:12 rhobert kern.info kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Aug 27 05:33:12 rhobert kern.info kernel: eth0: Tx error, status 4 (FID=0128)
Aug 27 05:33:14 rhobert kern.info kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Aug 27 05:33:14 rhobert kern.warn kernel: eth0: Tx timeout! Resetting card.
Aug 27 05:33:14 rhobert kern.info kernel: eth0: Tx error, status 4 (FID=0128)
Aug 27 05:33:17 rhobert kern.info kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Aug 27 05:33:17 rhobert kern.warn kernel: eth0: Tx timeout! Resetting card.
Aug 27 05:33:17 rhobert kern.info kernel: eth0: Tx error, status 4 (FID=0128)
Aug 27 05:33:17 rhobert kern.err kernel: eth0: Error -110 writing packet header to BAP
Aug 27 05:33:19 rhobert kern.info kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Aug 27 05:33:19 rhobert kern.warn kernel: eth0: Tx timeout! Resetting card.

Can anyone give me a clue as to what the problem is or where I can find out about these errors ?

Part of my problem seems to be that some of these tools e.g. iwconfig only exist on my embedded system and not on my development machine. It’s two different environments and completely different libraries :-(

Also, sometimes the access point sees the PCMCIA card, and sometimes it doesn’t (they are only 2 or 3 metres apart)

Any help appreciated.