Prism rev#1 chipset problem.

wood@addanc · 07-28-2007, 09:47 AM

Has anybody managed to get a Prism chipset revision #1 based Netgear WG511 wireless card going. If so, what driver did you use.

Code:

lspci -v
02:00.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette]/ISL3886 [Prism Javelin/Prism Xbow] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Netgear WG511 Wireless Adapter
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 80, IRQ 9
        Memory at 32000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1

When I run this card up with the prism54 driver I get the following:

Code:

boot.msg
<6>Loaded prism54 driver, version 1.2
<4>PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)
<6>ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 9 (level, low) -> IRQ 9
<6>usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
<6>input: Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse as /class/input/input4
<6>input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse] on usb-0000:00:07.2-2
<6>usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
<6>drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
<7>eth1: resetting device...
<7>eth1: uploading firmware...
<6>cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0x3e0-0x4ff: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0x820-0x8ff: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcf7: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0x3e0-0x4ff: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0x820-0x8ff: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcf7: clean.
<6>cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean.
<7>eth1: firmware version: 1.0.4.3
<7>eth1: firmware upload complete
<3>eth1: no 'reset complete' IRQ seen - retrying
<3>eth1: no 'reset complete' IRQ seen - retrying
<3>eth1: interface reset failure
<3>prism54: Your card/socket may be faulty, or IRQ line too busy :(

Appears to missing an interrupt. Could this be a firmware issue, since the firmware available from the prism54.org site appears to target 2.0, 2.5, 3.0 chipsets?

Lenard · 07-28-2007, 06:35 PM

Yep, I'm using it right now to write this reply...... first this is a prism 2.5 chipset regardless of what you see, it is just revision 01 of the chipset:

Code:

07:00.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette]/ISL3886 [Prism Javelin/Prism Xbow] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Netgear WG511 Wireless Adapter
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 80, IRQ 20
        Memory at 58000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

You do need the prism54 firmware file 1.0.4.3.arm renamed to isl3890 and it should go someplace like /lib/firmware. And in many cases one does not load the prism54 driver but rather the orinoco or orinoco_cs driver. The IRQ should be the same as your yenta (pcmcia/cardbus) device when in use;

Code:

$ cat /proc/interrupts
           CPU0
  0:   58908590   IO-APIC-edge      timer
  1:      57973   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
  8:          0   IO-APIC-edge      rtc
  9:    1708313   IO-APIC-fasteoi   acpi
 12:   15012870   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
 14:    2106942   IO-APIC-edge      libata
 15:          0   IO-APIC-edge      libata
 16:      14571   IO-APIC-fasteoi   HDA Intel
 17:   11759538   IO-APIC-fasteoi   fglrx
 19:          2   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb1, ohci_hcd:usb2, ohci_hcd:usb3
 20:       1369   IO-APIC-fasteoi   yenta, eth1
 22:     751857   IO-APIC-fasteoi   sata_sil, ndiswrapper

wood@addanc · 07-29-2007, 03:09 PM

I cannot get anything out of either the orinoco or orinoco_cs. Lenard in your post the interrupt list suggests that you have ndiswrapper running?

Lenard · 07-29-2007, 08:57 PM

I normally use the built-in wireless interface for my laptop(Acer5100);

Code:

06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
        Subsystem: AMBIT Microsystem Corp. TravelMate 2410
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 22
        Memory at b0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]

Which does use ndiswrapper with the 64-bit Windows driver for the wireless interface, so yes ndiswrapper is installed and used normally. But I still have in my /etc/modprobe.conf file the entries for the old orinoco and prism pcmcia/cardbis cards I still have, one of them is a Netgear WG511 card. It is not hard to do 'ifdown wlan0' and shutdown the built-in wireless then insert the WG511 interfce into the pcmcia/cardbus to use this wireless prism54 device.

The network related stuff from my /etc/modprobe.conf file, the eth1 entry works for both my pcmcia (orinoco_cs cards) and the Netgear WG511 cardbus interface;

Code:

alias eth0 8139cp
alias eth1 orinoco_cs
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

The /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 file I have;

Code:

TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=
BOOTPROTO=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=Aspier5100
IPADDR=192.168.1.53
DOMAIN=
ONBOOT=no
ONHOTPLUG=no
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=no
GATEWAY=192.168.1.100
NETMASK=255.255.0.0
ESSID=
CHANNEL=
MODE=
RATE=

wood@addanc · 08-13-2007, 03:45 PM

What distro and kernel are you using?

Lenard · 08-13-2007, 09:05 PM

I have used the wireless devices in numerous versions of the Red Hat Linux family; FC5/6 RHEL4/5, CentOS4/5 and SL4/5. Currently I'm running;

$ cat /etc/*release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client release 5 (Tikanga)

$ uname -a
Linux Aspire5100 2.6.22.2 #1 Fri Aug 10 06:13:39 EDT 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

wood@addanc · 08-18-2007, 02:21 PM

After extracting the firmware from the Windows driver I discovered that my version of the card use the soft MAC firmware, despite the lspci looking identical to the card used by Lenard. Netgear's PCI implementation defeats the object of the PCI plug-n-play. Tried the islsm driver and I got some sort of response (LEDs flash), unfortunately this driver appears a little immature e.g. changed the essid through iwconfig and a read back also through iwconfig indicates that the essid has been changed along with the channel/frequency

.

Thanks for the info Lenard but I think that I will give up on this card.