Problem with Orinoco PCMCIA card.

brandonloserkid · 08-28-2006, 07:38 PM

I have an orinoco card from ebay. It comes up in windows as WLAN Pc Card and in linux as a prism2 card. I searched google for the FCC ID and the s/n. I found the FCC ID matched to a couple of peoples gold and silver card from lucent/proxim. Did we get ripped off on ebay with a crappy card with a lucent bottom label (and there is no top label).

2Gnu · 08-29-2006, 11:08 AM

Sounds like you got something other than advertised.

The Hermes chipset cards - the classic ORiNOCO ones - have a pretty distintive shape. Here's a picture: http://vilimpoc.org/research/argus/i...gold-wifi.jpeg

Lots of right angles, no curves. There's a small cap in the center of the end of the card which, when removed, reveals an MMCX connector.

For what it's worth, a Prism 2.5 or 3 card will work fine, including with Kismet and other such things. If it's truly a Prism 2, toss it. They were bad.

brandonloserkid · 08-29-2006, 04:12 PM

Looks like my card. Here I uploaded some pictures of my card.

Side Shot
Label close up
Bottom
Top 1
Top 2

2Gnu · 08-29-2006, 09:58 PM

Sure looks like the real McCoy. The FCCID matches the real one.

What's the output of cardctl ident?

What's in dmesg after you hot-plug it?

Windows seeing it a WLAN PC card is still bugging me. Certain entries in /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf could produce this message: "Orinoco or Intersil Prism 2 Wireless" but that's OK - it's matching a hex value from the card with a text description.

Can you modprobe orinoco_cs and make it work?

There's still some old Intersil utility s/w floating around that would let you interrogate the card (even reflash the firmware). You'll have to search for it, though. Proxim pulled it from their public servers.

brandonloserkid · 08-30-2006, 11:28 AM

I upgraded my windows drivers with drivers from proxim and it still comes up WLAN PC Card... Maybe thats just proxims new generic description for windows? I'll post up what happens when I use cardctl ident and modprobe orinoco_cs (does slack 10.2 have orinoco drivers built in?).

-brandon

brandonloserkid · 08-30-2006, 11:46 AM

here was my results

Code:

>cardctl ident
Socket 0:
      Product Info: "Wireless", "WLAN PC Card", "Version 01.01", ""
      Manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
      Function 6 (Network)

I tried modprobe orinoco_cs it loaded the module but nothing happened. Is there more steps I need to take to activate a PCMCIA card? In dmesg it says watching 1 socket. I can't even get the lights on the card to come on, even though it sees the card in the socket as an Intersil Prism2 card.

brandonloserkid · 09-01-2006, 02:05 PM

any insight?

bird603568 · 09-01-2006, 04:08 PM

if im not mistaken, they swtiched chipsets then proxim took over

2Gnu · 09-01-2006, 04:59 PM

brandonloserkid,

Sorry I didn't see this sooner (I don't hang in this forum as much as I should - this thread really should be in wireless networking, but in any case ...)

Yes, the standard Slack kernel comes with orinoco_cs as a module.

Yes, there's more to do to get it to work. You need to have card services installed and the yenta socket module loaded as well. Maybe you're missing one of those. Does /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia restart do anything? Post a complete lsmod after modprobing the orinoco_cs.

As for the chipset changes, there were a couple. After the original Hermes chipset, which was OEM'd under several labels, there was the Hermes II - not Linux compatible as far as I could ever determine. Later, under Proxim, the ORiNOCO name was used for cards with Atheros and other chipsets. Your FCC ID matched the original Hermes, though.

When you updated the drivers in Windows, any mismatch between the Proxim software and your card should have been glaringly obvious. You should see the famous green bar signal strength meter in the taskbar.

One other clue: when you plug the card or restart pcmcia services, do you get any sound? Beep - beep, beep - boop, etc.? (Two beeps is good. Anything else is not.)

brandonloserkid · 09-01-2006, 10:09 PM

2gnu, thanks for the response. When I start the laptop I get a beep (pause) boop. Will post dmesg and lsmod in a minute or two. Thanks again for sticking with the thread!

brandonloserkid · 09-03-2006, 12:07 AM

results of the lsmod:

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss            36736   0  (unused)
snd-mixer-oss          12376   0  [snd-pcm-oss]
usb-ohci               19368   0  (unused)
ehci-hcd               17516   0  (unused)
usbcore                59148   1  [usb-ohci ehci-hcd]
snd-atiixp              8640   2 
snd-ac97-codec         58556   0  [snd-atiixp]
snd-pcm                54344   1  [snd-pcm-oss snd-atiixp snd-ac97-codec]
snd-timer              13764   1  [snd-pcm]
snd                    32772   0  [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-atiixp snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm snd-timer]
soundcore               3396   3  [snd]
snd-page-alloc          4712   0  [snd-mixer-oss snd-atiixp snd-pcm snd-timer snd]
8139too                13928   1 
mii                     2272   0  [8139too]
crc32                   2880   0  [8139too]
orinoco_cs              4244   0  (unused)
orinoco                32404   0  [orinoco_cs]
hermes                  5668   0  [orinoco_cs orinoco]
ds                      6548   1  [orinoco_cs]
yenta_socket           10436   1 
pcmcia_core            39172   0  [orinoco_cs ds yenta_socket]
ntfs                   51232   1  (autoclean)
ide-scsi                9392   0

sorry it took so long, got stuck sheetrocking the garage today...

Nylex · 09-03-2006, 07:41 AM

Well lsmod shows the relevant modules are loaded, so that's a good thing. What does iwconfig show?

brandonloserkid · 09-03-2006, 01:32 PM

iwconfig shows no wireless extensions. iwconfig wlan0 shows theres no valid wireless adapter.

tried /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia start/stop/and restart to no avail I can't get the damn lights on the card to even turn on

brandonloserkid · 09-10-2006, 08:52 PM

what if I try to upgrade the kernel

Nylex · 09-15-2006, 07:11 AM

It might help, or might not. Not sure what to try. Perhaps post the output of iwconfig (or "ifconfig -a"), maybe someone will be able to help further.