Belkin Wireless G Plus & Compaq v2417au laptop

[Alex Kavanagh]

Hi Christian

At Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:39:04 +0100,
Christian Bullow wrote:
>  
> Alex Kavanagh wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > At Thu, 20 Apr 2006 10:32:32 +0100, Christian Bullow wrote: Hi,
> > just a repost as I"m a new member of the mailing list and I didn't
> > receive this e-mail back from the list or see any reply.
> >
> > Looking at
> > http://www.crjb.net/attachments/v2417au-linux/lspci-grep-subordinate.txt
> >  will assign busses be the correct fix? I have two lines saying
> > primary=00 which I havn't seen any other people mention.
> >
> >> I'd say that you probably have the same hardware as mine viz
> >> PCIxx21 cardbus bridge.  The patch noted in the very recent email
> >> from Bernhard Kaindl might fix it.  I've applied it to mine and
> >> it has definitely fixed up the subordinate bus problem.
> >
> >> My problem is that the actual resources ON the card aren't being
> >> detected properly so that the driver can't find (in my case) the
> >> actual serial port of the modem.  Perhaps it is similar in your
> >> case?
> >
> >> Still, you could try the patch - it might be the solution to your
> >>  problem.
> Is this in conjunction with pci=assign buses ? wireless is my only
> internet link, so I have to download the kernel on windows and reboot.
> I can't install any extra packages until the wireless card(s) work in
> the cardbus

No, the patch to 2.6.16 actually means that you don't need
pci=assign-busses as a kernel parameter.  Basically, what I think is
going on is that the yenta_socket module isn't correctly picking up
the right bus number because of the particular hardware that is
installed in our laptops.  I think that HP have done something
'different' (i.e. not previously seen by the Kernel developers) with
the TI PCIxx21 cardbus bridge hardware interfacing which was causing
yenta_socket and the PCI bridge software to not be able to find the
bridge properly.  The very recent patch, mentioned above, fixes this
problem and allows the processor to actually access the cardbus card
correctly.

However, I *think* (but don't know) that there is an additional
problem with the TI PCIxx21 interface not being set up properly in our
laptops which is why our cards aren't working.

Thus, this is probably a step in the right direction, but maybe not
the whole solution yet.

To answer your problem, you could try rebooting linux with the
pci=assign-busses parameter and see if it helps.  If not, then you
could try to download the 2.6.16.1 kernel, add the patch mentioned in
the previous email, install the new kernel and try that.

If that sounds too daunting, then I would wait a few days/weeks until
the problem can be sorted out.  I'm going to keep looking at
datasheets and try to work out what might be different on these
laptops.

Incidentally, my card (Novatel Merlin G3 U530) has to have a special
driver from Novatel for Windows because Windows, as standard, fails to
detect the device as a multifunction device.  The additional fix from
Novatel 'fixes' Windows by getting it to detect the additional
function and installing a driver for it.  Not sure if this sheds any
light on the issue.

Cheers
Alex

PS hope you don't mind me copying it back to the list - it might help
someone there or help a dev.