Messed up PCMCIA firmware

[Pavel Roskin]

On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 12:05 -0700, Madhusudan Singh wrote:
> Network card - Netgear MA401 Rev D
> 
> NICID x0800c (from what I remember). Initial firmware version 1.0.0.

What does it mean?  The initial firmware doesn't reside in the flash.
It's loaded in genesis mode to allow flashing primary and secondary
firmware.

If you mean that your original secondary firmware was 1.0.0, I don't
think you got it right.  The oldest firmware for 3842 I know is 1.1.0.

>  Tried to upgrade it to 1.8.2 because it did not support WPA2.
> Followed Jun Sun's guide on flashing Intersil based chipsets with
> version 1.8.2 :
> 
> http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/
> 
> prism2_srec failed to download the firmware on to the flash memory. It
> also wiped out (apparently) the previous one (I used option -f).

Did you try to upgrade the primary firmware as well?

> Now, the card does not even register as a network interface (Readback
> test fails complaining about missing primary firmware).

Please never rephrase error messages.  Even little details may be
helpful.

>  So, I do not know how I can use prism2_srec even if get the firmware
> from somewhere.

You should be able to flash primary firmware in genesis mode and then
flash secondary firmware.

> What are my options ? How do I flash it with its original firmware (I
> downloaded the contents of the initial CD from Netgear's website) ?

I don't think the initial firmware is needed for 3842 cards.

> No. I did not make a backup copy of the original firmware :(

I don't think it's even possible to back up firmware from the card.
There are areas in the firmware that are rewritten for the specific
card.

If you are going to write more about it, please mention the version of
the software, i.e. the kernel and hostap-utils.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin