I have a 3Com 3CRWE737 96B AirConnect Wireless NIC that I'm trying to get up and going. I'm running RH7.2 with a self configured kernel branching off of the version 2.4.7-10. I disabled all PCMCIA support in this config so that I could install the pcmcia-cs package. I did this because my other NIC (wired) is a 3Com 575 and the kernel didn't support it.

The pcmcia-cs package says that it supports all AirConnect cards and orinoco_cs is the driver that should work. I have all of the drivers inplace but on boot up I get the error

Error -16 Shutting down hermes chipset

I've tried everything I could think of but nothing is working.

Thanks for the help,

Jay

Offhand, I have kernel pcmcia running with a 3com 575. The problem may have been with kernel pcmcia and your cardbus.

Check the "demsg" for what the closure was on trying to bind the card. I assume you've already gotten the hermes.conf patch file from Tourrilhes's website, or maybe Hinds was good enough to put it in the most recent pcmcia-cs. Also, from dmesg you can find out what version of those modules you are using. orinoco .10 is current. You may be back around .06b, which was default for RH. With those I never got the 3com to work properly. However, I've only gotten to play with one of those for a short period of time; my neighbor has a pair.

Luck,

Finegan

This is what I get from the dmesg command:

hermes.c: 16 Jan 2002 David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
orinoco.c 0.09b (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
orinoco_cs.c 0.09b (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
eth1: Station identity 001f:0002:0002:0001
eth1: Looks like a Symbol firmware version [V2.20-02] (parsing to 22002)
eth1: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth1: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth1: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth1: MAC address 00:50A:F5:CF:4C
eth1: Station name "Prism I"
eth1: ready
eth1: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x0147
eth1: Error -16 shutting down Hermes chipset
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
hermes @ 0x100: Card removed while issuing command.
eth1: Error -16 shutting down Hermes chipset


Maybe someone can decipher the code and tell me what I'm doing wrong...

Thanks,

Jay

orinoco .09b, the newest pcmcia-cs is up that high? Oh, I was wrong early btw, the newest orinoco is now .11 I doubt the version would matter, but you might want to grab the newest one and compile them.

For some reason it really doesn't like that i/o address. The hermes.conf file doesn't bind it to any specific manfid, so maybe there's something there.

I can't find much on www.google.com/linux right now about it, but unfortunately work is work today. You might want to check Hind's site about pcmcia-cs. I remember something about changing one of the files in /etc/pcmcia so that it allocates different i/o settings, memory registers etc. Its not hard to juggle, but I've never had to do it before.

You could also try:

cardctl ident

See if it returns with the current manfid for the card, which I don't know if it will... If so you could try hacking that into either the hermes.conf file if you had to use that to patch in the orinoco modules... or if Hinds' pcmcia-cs actually has it in there on its own, it will be in /etc/pcmcia/config.

I'm interested to see how this one turns out. I wish I had a Symbol based card around so I could hack on it as well.

Luck,

Finegan

Tried the cardctl ident and got both cards but it recognizes my AirConnect as a 737A not a 73796B. They both use the same orinoco_cs driver so I don't know if that will make alot of difference but.....

When I did the ident I got my manfid to be 0x0101, 0x0001 for my AirConnect. Do I need to enter this into my hermes.conf? Also, if I have a hermes.conf is this the config file that pcmcia-cs defaults too?

Just a side note...
In /etc/pcmcia/config I have 2 AirConnect options: 737A and 73796B but in hermes.conf only one, 737A.

Thanks for the help,

Jay

Okay, hmm... at the end of config it says to also source any file in the directory that ends in .conf

My experience is that it will use hermes.conf before it will use an equivalent entry in config, therefore, move hermes.conf to some other directory, like /root for the time being, and then hard restart pcmcia. Simply pulling and slapping the card won't do as cardmgr has the conf files cached somewhere:

/etc/init.d/pcmcia restart

See if it binds it right. If not, I would modify the entry in hermes.conf (after making a backup somewhere), with your memory i/o settings and proper card ID number and see if that works. Something like:

card "3Com AirConnect"
version "3Com", "3CRWE73796B AirConnect Wireless LAN PC Card"
manfid 0x0101, 0x0001
bind "orinoco_cs"

This could easily hang your box. This is a test of the Finegan educated guess system. Warning, this is only a guess.

Luck,

Finegan

Performed both and all I got was one lousy blink from my LED on my 3Com. Just like it does when booting up.

BTW: Still getting the same dmesg from boot up.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Sorry man, thought we were on to something there. I googled for the error and anything on the card, but it doesn't seem that too many people are using this thing with Linux right now. I also emailed my buddy who has a pair of them so I'm going to try them out on my LAN tonight. Check Hind's site is the best I can think of.

Luck,

Finegan

I appreciate the help and let me know anything you find.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Hey Finegan,

Just so you know.....

I've gotten to the point where I'm getting a slow blinking green LED on my 3Com Wireless. Orinoco_cs, orinoco, and hermes are loading correctly and it looks as if they are binding to the card (I'm not so sure how to tell this part, but due to the light blinking my guess is yes). I'm still not getting anything with ifconfig or with iwconfig. I've tried some of the setup options but nothing seems to work, they all seem to give me the same error that I reported earlier. I'll keep trying and hopefully someone can give me some assistance.

Thanks,

Jay

Sorry for the long lag in reply, my ISP [my neighbor] forgot to pay the cable bill, and its only coincidence that I'm at work on a Sunday. I figured it out. First off the 3crwe737a and 96b are the same card... go figure.

The orinoco drivers between v .06b and .11 in-kernel pcmcia and pcmcia-cs, with wireless extensions 11 and 12 all didn't do the trick.

Here's what did, a driver put together by a Finnish hobbiest. I haven't fiddled with Host AP mode for it, nor did I try to compile it for pcmcia-cs, but I got ad-hoc and managed modes to work flawlessly. A few important bits of note:

Make sure to check out the README on how to compile it for pcmcia-cs. It will take a recompile of all of pcmcia-cs.

Make sure in the file that gets added to /etc/pcmcia, prism.conf, to uncomment the 3Com AirConnect card (this is supposed to be only marginally supported, hence it is commented out). I also used the bottom line of the .conf file to set the initial values of the card.

WEP don't work. It sucks anyway. Okay, I couldn't get WEP to work. Maybe you can if you need it.

Dmesg gets spammed with a ton of useful debugging information.

If you down if-down the device before pulling the card there are occasionally kernel panics.

It uses a nonstandard device name, wlan0 instead of eth0.

Post back if you run into any snags along the way. I could mail you a tarball of my kernel, /etc/pcmcia directory and /lib/lodules/2.4.18 if you want.

Luck,

Finegan

Ok... I've got the tar and installed the drivers in the proper location. I've recopiled pcmcia-cs and uncommented the prism2.conf. Everything is good up untill now.

The thing is,it uses, like you said, wlan0. I don't have a /dev/wlan0 and I don't know how to create it.

The driver gets loaded. I can do an lsmod and I see both of the drivers for both of my cards.

When I do a iwconfig from the wireless_tools I get "no wireless extentions blah blah blah". I get the slow blinking LED, which means that it's doing something (acorrding to 3com it's looking for a AP), no IP. I don't really know how to configure this card and there isn't anything in the README's that help with the config i.e. no wlan0.

Thanks for all of your work thus far and I hope that we're in the home stretch,

Jeremy

This card, as I discovered just yesterday (day four of playing with it), does sometimes go dodgy under prism2.o, best to check dmesg and see if it is reading right. If it isn't, the messages will be easy to interpret even to a layman geek. You don't need to create a device in /dev for it, sorry, crossover in vocabulary there. It should respond to ifconfig normally.

A few tricks about iwconfig:

iwconfig, with no trailing argument will only show the info on a card if it is currently ifconfig'ed up AND has an IP address associated with it. Try:

ifconfig wlan0 up (which it should be by default)
iwconfig wlan0 (this should show the current settings of the card)
iwconfig wlan0 mode managed (I'm assuming that your not using ad-hoc)
iwconfig wlan0 essid whatever
dhcpcd wlan0 (this last bit probably won't work)

I have had a lot of problems trying to get this thing to take an IP through dhcp (except in ad-hoc mode), so you might want to configure it by hand:

ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.2 up
route add default gw 192.168.1.1
(then edit /etc/resolv.conf with
nameserver 123.123.123.123
nameserver 123.123.123.123

The IPs, are of course just examples.

That should about cover it.

Luck,

Finegan

Fingan!!!! You are the MAN!!!! I'm seeing a fast blinking LED and I've got an IP!!! Thank you so much for your help!! This is great!

I'm going to post this on my web page so that everyone can see how we did it!

I can't thank you enough, but Thanks,

Jay

Rockin' that one was the last gap: Old Lucent, Prism2/2.5, Cisco, and finally the bloody Symbol cards... I wonder what else is going to come out that'll cause people to go bongoroo? When you're done, mail me that web address!

Cheers,

Finegan