adding Proxim (Agere) orinoco gold card to sarge

r.stiltskin · 10-22-2004, 03:09 PM

I installed sarge with a 2.4.26 kernel about a month ago. Now I'm trying to get it to use a Proxim Orinoco 802.11b PC card I got recently. The card works: it installed in windows without trouble & can pick up networks.

In debian, I'm really groping around in the dark; I found threads here & there, but I can't find anything that really explains the process from beginning to end.

As far as I can tell, my PCMCIA is working and the card is recognized. I get beeps when I plug it in & when I take it out. When I run "cardctl ident" it prints:
Socket 0:
product info: "Agere Systems", "Wireless PC Card Model 0111","",""
manfid: 0x0156, 0x0003
function: 6 (network)

I installed wireless-tools package, but when I type "iwconfig" it gives:
lo no wireless extensions
eth0 no wireless extensions

I believe the orinoco_cs driver should work with this card, so I added orinoco to /etc/modules.

lsmod gives me:
orinoco_cs (unused)
orinoco [used by orinoco_cs]
hermes [used by orinoco_cs orinoco]
...
yenta_socket
pcmcia_core [used by orinoco_cs ds yenta_socket]
...
(and other modules of course but I don't think any others are relevant here).

Also, based on stuff I found in several tutorials, I
(a) created a file /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf containing:
device "orinoco_cs"
class "network"
module "hermes", "orinoco", "orinoco_cs"
card "Wireless PC Card Model 0111"
manfid 0x0156, 0x0003
bind "orinoco_cs"

and (b) commented out the lines between ----start section to remove----- and ----end section to remove---- in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts.

I don't know what either of those things was supposed to accomplish, but in any case I don't see any indication that the card is being recognized correctly. In System Tools/networking/add/wireless no wireless device is listed.

Can anyone please give me instructions (or a link to complete documentation) that will let me get this thing working?

r.stiltskin · 10-22-2004, 03:13 PM

I found some more information that is probably useful, but I don't know what to do about it.

dmesg now gives me the following relating to this pc card:

Quote:

orinoco_cs.c 0.13d (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
eth1: Station identity 0015:0002:0001:000a
eth1: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 1.10.2
eth1: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth1: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth1: WEP supported, 104-bit key
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 6 bytes. (rid=0xfc01, len=0x0000)
eth1: MAC address 15:00:02:00:01:00
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 34 bytes. (rid=0xfc0e, len=0x0000)
eth1: Station name ""
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 2 bytes. (rid=0xfd10, len=0x0000)
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 2 bytes. (rid=0xfc06, len=0x0000)
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 2 bytes. (rid=0xfc83, len=0x0000)
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 2 bytes. (rid=0xfc82, len=0x0000)
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 2 bytes. (rid=0xfc0c, len=0x0000)
hermes @ IO 0x200: Truncating LTV record from -2 to 2 bytes. (rid=0xfc0d, len=0x0000)
eth1: firmware ALLOC bug detected (old Symbol firmware?). Trying to work around... failed!
eth1: Error -5 allocating Tx buffer
orinoco_cs: register_netdev() failed

Any way to fix this?

r.stiltskin · 10-22-2004, 03:17 PM

Ah, I just found what may be the answer here:

http://www.splitbrain.org/dokuwiki/wlan:orinocosilver

even though that one says silver and mine says gold, looks like the same problem.

Unless someone has an easier solution, I guess I'll try that one.