Loading PRI into cards with serial EEPROM only

[Bjorn Wesen]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Bjorn Wesen wrote:
> > ISA-connected PCMCIA/CF adapter: mem=0xe4800000, pccard_io=0xe4600000
> > hostap_isa: CIS: 01 03 00 00 ff 17 ...
> > hostap_isa: manfid=0x0156, 0x0003
> 
> This ID makes me wonder if it's some kind of Lucent chipset rather than
> Prism3.  (0x0156, 0x0002) was used by both Lucent and Intersil cards in
> the past.

It is PRISM2 I think. 0x0156, 0x0002 is PRISM2 reference design in the 
hostap_plx list at least, so I assume 0x0003 is a close variant.. The 
manufacturer actually supplied a linux driver that is copyrighted by Agere 
and refers to the chip as Hermes-II. The driver is a real mess though so I 
don't want to use it.. :)

> > hostap_isa: cor_index=0x7 cor_offset=0x3e0
> > Prism2/2.5 PC Card detected
> > hostap_isa: Registered netdevice wlan0
> > ccsr: 0x80
> 
> It's not clear what last line says.  I think you should not read CCSR
> (mapped to HCR in Prism chipsets).  You should write there the correct
> value, and it's something you should guess or determine based on the
> configuration of the card.

Yeah forget that value, it was just a debug output. 

The Intersil docs say that HCR is only mapped there during soft reset 
anyway.

The thing is, I am getting a bit unsure on what download modes are actually 
required for a platform with a Small Serial EEPROM. The Intersil docs says 
that the MAC only reads the CIS entries from the EEPROM. What happens then, 
if there is no flash, doesn't the MAC just stop anyway, would I need to put 
it manually in genesis mode at all ? Perhaps it could be strapped 
electrically to genesis mode. There is never any actual code read from the 
eeprom right.. 

Are the PDA records read from the serial EEPROM as well, btw ? Again, the 
intersil docs only mention the CIS entries, but one manufacturer told me 
that the EEPROM contains "CIS and PDA entries". 

I think my AUX port transfers are broken, because all I/O register accesses 
seem to work as planned, and attribute memory accesses as well, but not the 
aux transfers.. 

> See table on the page 2-3 in http://home.eunet.cz/jt/wifi/Download.pdf

Thanks, I was looking for some "real" docs :) 

> Currently hostap tries 0x1f and 0x0f to set genesis mode and 0x17 and 0x07
> respectively to use it.  You may need to play with other bits.

Yeah, I guess I could. 

Would there be a need to download an "Initial" firmware into such a card btw 
? It will never have the need to actually _flash_ any of the following 
firmwares, so can the Primary run directly from RAM without any "Initial" 
firmware ?

Regards,

Bjorn