Problems with hostap_plx and US Robotics 2415

[Martin Troester]

Hi,

I am currently having trouble getting a US Robotics 2410 PC-card
working in a US Robotics 2415 PC-Card/PCI-bridge. I followed the
installation description in the README files and in
http://www.trekweb.com/~jasonb/articles/linux_wireless2.shtml.

I have to admit that I am relatively new to this topic, since up to
this point all wireless-adapters I used were pure PCMCIA-cards in a
notebook, working without any problem with the linux-ng drivers. So if
this problem is well-known or if I am annoying anyone with this mail,
please excuse me for this, but I could not find any information on
this problem searching the web and newsgroups with google.

The scenario:

PC 1 (Linux)
- Debian 3.0 r0 woody - Kernel 2.4.18
- hostap-2002-10-12.tar as hostap driver source
- US-Robotics PC-Card/PCI adapter (equiv. to PLX) with 2410 PC Card
- wireless tools 23-2

PC 2 (Windows)
- Windows XP Professional
- Compaq WL 1000 PCMCIA Card

For both PCs the drivers have been set up properly. The output for the
Linux PC after modprobe hostap_plx:
======================================================================
hostap_plx: hostap_plx.c 0.0.0 2002-10-12 (SSH Communications Security
Corp, Jouni Malinen)
hostap_plx: (c) Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>
PLX 9052 PCI/PCMCIA adapter: mem=0xfedfe000, plx_io=0xfc00 irq=10,
pccard_io=0xfc00
hostap_plx: Registered netdevice wlan0
wlan0: NIC: id=0x8002 v1.0.0
wlan0: PRI: id=0x15 v0.3.0
wlan0: STA: id=0x1f v0.7.6
======================================================================

After that, I assign:

======================================================================
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.1
iwconfig wlan0 essid bla
iwconfig wlan0 channel 11
iwconfig wlan0 mode Master
======================================================================

With this, I get when calling iwconfig wlan0:

======================================================================
iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"bla"
          Mode:Master  Frequency:2.422GHz
          Access Point: 00:90:D2:08:50:86
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:-6 dBm
          Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off
          Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0
          Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0
          Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0
          Invalid misc:0
          Missed beacon:0
======================================================================

Letting the Windows XP PC scan for available nets (all
encryption/authorization etc. deactivated) I find the net "bla"
without any problems in the list of available nets. Assigning the
WinXP pc-card a static IP like 192.168.0.2, it should then be no
problem to get the two devices communicating, but now I don't know how
to proceed: both cards have found each other, are both transmitting on
the same channel #11, but it is not possible to PING each other.

What I can say is that the Windows XP system with the COMPAQ card is
working in different wireless environments without any problems.

One of my colleagues has the same problem with getting the USR PC-Card
in the PLX-Adapter to work, but using the wireless-ng drivers. It is
exactly the same phenomenon: both cards find the net, but cannot
communicate, for example by simply sending pings to the other side.

I really do not know what to try any more, so please let me know if
you have any suggestions about how to get the PLX-Card version
running.

Thanks!

Regards
Martin