BCM4321 support

Gábor Stefanik netrolller.3d at gmail.com
Sat Aug 27 14:13:20 EDT 2011


2011/8/27 Octavian Voicu <octavian.voicu at gmail.com>:
> 2011/8/24 Rafał Miłecki <zajec5 at gmail.com>:
>> 2011/8/24 Octavian Voicu <octavian.voicu at gmail.com>:
>>> I just replaced my WLAN card on my Dell laptop. The old one, a BCM4311
>>> that came with the laptop, stopped working at some point -- I was
>>> getting FOUND UNSUPPORTED PHY (Analog 0, Type 0, Revision 0).
>>
>> It seems the card or the slot died. As new card works in the slot, I
>> believe it's card that died.
>
> Something strange is happening.
>
> Initially when I first tried the new BCM4321 PCIe card, it would show
> no MAC address. I would have to set a MAC manually using `ifconfig hw
> ether ...`, and only after that I could bring the interface up. It
> still didn't see any networks.
>
> The lspci -vnn would show it like this:
> 0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306
> 802.11a Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4321] (rev 03)
>        Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11a Wireless LAN
> Controller [14e4:4321]
>        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
>        Memory at f9ffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
>        Memory at <ignored> (64-bit, prefetchable)
>        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
>        Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
>        Capabilities: [e8] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
>        Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
>        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
>        Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
>        Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-00-ff-ff-00-00-00
>        Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
>        Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
>        Kernel modules: ssb
>
> Then I upgraded the drivers and it magically started to work, or so I
> thought. It would see its MAC address and, at the same time, lspci
> -vnn showed it correctly, like this:
> 0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4321
> 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4328] (rev 03)
>        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n
> Wireless LAN Controller [103c:1367]
>        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
>        Memory at f9ffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
>        Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=1M]
>
> After working for a day or so and forgetting about it, I check it
> again and I see it's not working anymore. It reverted to the old 4321
> device id shown by lspci, and no MAC. Note that the initial lspci
> output I've given is generated now, as I didn't have any dump from
> then. I'm positive about the device id, not so much about the rest,
> but I'm assuming it was as it is now.
>
> I'm starting to think the driver upgrades weren't responsible for
> "fixing" the card. It looks similar with the pattern I had with the
> old card: didn't work, then one day magically started to work, next
> reboot stopped working again for good.
>
> Currently, inserting b43 with verbose=3, setting the MAC, and bringing
> up the interface gives this in dmesg:
>
> [  130.112440] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4321 WLAN found (core revision 12)
> [  130.210099] b43-phy0 debug: Found PHY: Analog 5, Type 4, Revision 2
> [  130.210135] b43-phy0 debug: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, Version
> 0x2055, Revision 4
> [  130.298741] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMNLS,
> Firmware-ID: FW13 ]
> [  185.230221] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 508.1084 (2009-01-14 01:32:01)
> [  185.253435] b43-phy0 ERROR: radio post init timeout
> [  185.370162] b43-phy0 debug: Chip initialized
> [  185.370408] b43-phy0 debug: 64-bit DMA initialized
> [  185.370487] b43-phy0 debug: QoS enabled
> [  185.411224] b43-phy0 debug: Wireless interface started
> [  185.411264] b43-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 2
>
> Notice the line "ERROR: radio post init timeout". Don't remember
> seeing this error before (but didn't use verbose either). Also, notice
> how lspci shows that the second chunk of memory is ignored:
>    Memory at <ignored> (64-bit, prefetchable)
> while when it was working it would show this:
>    Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=1M]
>
> I also tried switching the PCIe mini-card slot (I have 3 of them;
> tried them all with no change).
>
> Questions:
>
> 1) Is this a hardware problem (with the slot and/or the wlan card itself)?
>
> Don't have other wlan PCIe mini-cards to test. How can I diagnose the problem?
>
> Can all the mini-card slots be busted? (never used the other two, they
> are for WPAN and WWAN)
>
> Should it matter that I'm using a different WLAN card than the
> original one? The laptop also has a "Wi-Fi Catcher" feature,
> integrated with the rfkill button (there is a 3rd state of the button
> that blinks a LED if there are wifi networks around), which stopped
> working at some point (probably when my original card got busted). It
> never worked with the new card.
>
> 2) Could it be software related?
>
> How can the system consistently misread the PCI device id?

I think the device ID is stored in the SPROM. Perhaps your card's
SPROM is busted.

>
> What's the deal with the second memory chunk? Is it where the MAC is
> stored, and why is the driver ignoring it now?
>
>
> I realize there's a lot of data here, and even more questions, so any
> help is appreciated :)
>
> Thanks,
> Octavian
>
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>



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