flaky Linksys WPC-11 card; request for thoughts/suggestions

[Greg Johnson]

I am seeing some flaky behavior with my Linksys WMP-11 v. 3 pcmcia card.

A few questions, and then some details:

 - Have other people seen flaky behavior with these Linksys cards?

 - Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on getting this Linksys card
   working reliably?  Should I re-install pcmcia-cs or something?

 - Are there other hostapd-compatible Intersil Prism PCMCIA cards that people
   have found to be rock-solid and reliable?

Now, a few details on what I've observed:

(I have a Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop, Linux 2.4.20 kernel, hostap v0.0.3)

When I insert the card, it seems as though it depends on the phase of the
moon as to whether it will work.  (Below is a typical set of messages in
/var/log/messages if it fails.)  (Actually, the dump below was from before
I upgraded to hostap v0.0.3.  But I think this is a hardware problem.)

However, it sometimes fails much more dramatically, crashing the kernel
and completely locking up the box.  A couple of times I have needed to
do really nasty fsck's after these crashes.

Booting the Dell box up in Windows 98, if I insert the card after the
boot about half the time it hard-freezes Windows, with a funny stripe
of color across the top of the screen.  I've found that if I turn the
machine off, insert the card, and boot Win98, the system usually comes
up successfully, and finds the card during the boot.  Then (and this
really gets weird) under windows I associate with an AP, and do lots
of pings (100 say).  This causes the card to become physically warm.
I then use the Windows PCMCIA facility to stop the card and reboot.
(During reboot, I remove the card from the PCMCIA slot).  After coming
up under Linux, with the card perceptibly warm, I can usually insert
the card and have Linux successfully find it and start it.

As another data point, I went to Fry's and bought another Linksys WMP-11 v.3.
Tried it in my laptop in the parking lot, and basically got the same result.
So, I went in and got a refund.

Thanks VERY MUCH for any suggestions, help, or guidance!

Greg Johnson

Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie cardmgr[1429]: initializing socket 1
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie kernel: cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie cardmgr[1429]: socket 1: Linksys WPC11 Ver 3 11Mbps WLAN
Card
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie cardmgr[1429]: executing: 'modprobe hostap_cs'
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie kernel: hostap_cs: hostap_cs.c 0.0.0 2002-10-12 (SSH
Communications Security Corp, Jouni Malinen)
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie kernel: hostap_cs: (c) Jouni Malinen
<jkmaline at cc.hut.fi> way to be dude.
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie kernel: hostap_cs: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 7, io
0x0100-0x013f
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie cardmgr[1429]: executing: './network start wlan0'
Jun 16 08:06:18 roadie kernel: hostap_cs: Registered netdevice wlan0
Jun 16 08:06:19 roadie kernel: wlan0: prism2_enable_aux_port - timeout -
reg=0x8007
Jun 16 08:06:19 roadie kernel: wlan0: prism2_enable_aux_port - timeout -
reg=0xffff
Jun 16 08:06:19 roadie kernel: hostap_cs: Initialization failed
Jun 16 08:06:25 roadie kernel: wlan0: MAC port 0 enabling failed; try again
Jun 16 08:06:25 roadie last message repeated 9 times
Jun 16 08:06:25 roadie kernel: wlan0: MAC port 0 enabling failed
Jun 16 08:06:25 roadie kernel: wlan0: could not enable MAC port

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