DWL 520 E1 (the continuing saga)

[Cliff]

Oh yes, the saga does continue ;)

I've been having trouble getting rev E1 firmware to load on my hardware 
(see below).  The hardware in question is an athlon xp 2600+ running on 
an MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR motherboard.

I have found that many repeated attempts to upload primary firmware 
(prism2_srec -gs ...) eventually results in success (dmesg finally stops 
reporting "wifi0: valid PDA not found").

The number of repeated attempts necessary seems to vary and *could* be 
based on how fast I can repeat the command (up arrow, enter, up arrow, 
enter, etc...) but I can't be sure about this.

Also, the only difference in dmesg output between a successful load and 
unsuccessful is the "valid PDA not found" message.  Every other message 
appears to be the same.  Additionally, once the firmware is uploaded 
successfully it always loads successfully.  Repeated upload attempts do 
not give any further error messages (including unloading the module and 
repeating the load sequence) until next reboot (might even need to be a 
power off reboot).

Of course, once I've played the game of mass uploading, I can complete 
the rest of the steps and connect to an access point (finally!).

In my very non-technical view I would guess this is a timing issue of 
some sort and that somehow in all my upload attempts the timing just 
happens to work out and all is well?  What say you?

Thanks for you continued perserverance,
Cliff

>
>
> Pavel Roskin wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 cliffo at u.washington.edu wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>>I'm using the latest version from CVS (downloaded today) and using
>>>prism2_srec included in that update.  prism2_srec is failing on the
>>>second firmware update for the card and I'm perplexed as to my next
>>>step.
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>I'm fighting with this problem as well, except that I'm using a PCMCIA
>>card, DWL-650 revision P.  See this thread:
>>http://lists.shmoo.com/pipermail/hostap/2004-January/thread.html#5256
>>
>>  
>>
>>>[~]# ./utils/prism2_srec -gs wlan0 ~cliff/firmware/pm010102.hex
>>><from dmesg>
>>>prism2_download: dl_cmd=4 start_addr=0x003f0000 num_areas=3
>>>wifi0: test Genesis mode with HCR 0x0f
>>>wifi0: Original COR value: 0x0
>>>Readback test succeeded, HCR 0x0f
>>>prism2_hw_init: initialized in 0 ms
>>>wifi0: valid PDA not found
>>>wifi0: NIC: id=0x8000 v0.0.1
>>>wifi0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.1.2
>>>Could not get RID for component STA
>>>wifi0: Failed to read STA f/w version - only Primary f/w present
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>You are a bit luckier.  You don't have "init command completed too
>>quickly" as I have with TI bridges, but you still have "valid PDA not
>>found".
>>
>>The rest is obvious.  The second load is done so that the PDA is used.
>>If it's not available, you cannot go further.
>>
>>What happens is that the primary firmware is loaded successfully.  If runs
>>after that and allows to run simple commands such initialization and
>>requests for version numbers.  It even returns its own version number
>>correctly.  However, it fails to execute the command to open AUX port,
>>which is needed to access the PDA.
>>
>>In fact, I tested the same card in two machines.  One is AthlonXP 2000
>>with VIA KT133 motherboard.  The other is Pentium 800MHz with Intel 810
>>chipset.  The kernel, the driver, the card and even the PCMCIA-to-PCI
>>bridge are the same.  However, the card only works on the Athlon machine.
>>
>>I tried to add delays in different places but it had no effect.  Maybe the
>>driver should initialize some register that is set randomly dependent on
>>the bus speed.
>>
>>  
>>
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