Primary Firmware Download

Jouni Malinen jkmaline
Sat Aug 2 23:01:26 PDT 2003


On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 07:55:53PM -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote:

> > My current guess is to 1) set Genesis mode, 2) load PRI to RAM, 3) soft
> > reset to PRI without Genesis mode, 4) RAM download secondary f/w using
> > PRI.

That guess was correct. I used to test Genesis mode with hostap_pci, but
I decided to quickly test with hostap_cs. Everything started working
suddenly :-). I was able to enable the Genesis mode and load Primary f/w
to RAM. This forced me to finally fix PRI-only operation ;-). With this,
I was able to load secondary f/w into RAM while the card was running in
PRI-only mode. I have not yet tested, whether this works when PRI is
actually loaded from flash, but I would assume it would work equally
well.

I haven't yet fixed hostap_pci, so Genesis mode can now be used only
with hostap_cs. However, PRI-only mode should work even with hostap_pci.
I will take a look at fixing this. If someone is interested in working
with this, the only missing part should be in adding
prism2_pci_genesis_reset() into hostap_pci.c. hostap_plx can wait for
the time being, since I do not have my PLX adapter easily available.

> Anyway, I'm yet to see any Prism hardware without flash, where anything
> like that would be really useful.

RAM downloading Primary can be quite useful even with flash. I feel much
more confident flashing a new version after I have been able to first
verify that it actually works using RAM download. Having PRI f/w older
than 1.0.7 on hfa3842 used to make this quite difficult (at least with
Host AP driver) before Genesis mode support.

> I downgraded my DWL-520 Rev. A to PRI 1.0.4, STA 1.1.0, but now hostap_pci
> crashes on load.  That's a theme for a separate thread once I do at least
> minimal debugging.

I assume your patch fixed the crash. Do you know why that firmware
combination does not work?


And the new magic prism2_srec commands:

# Download primary firmware into RAM using Genesis mode
./prism2_srec -g wlan0 ak010100.hex
# card is now in PRI-only mode with very limited functionality

# download station firmware into RAM
./prism2_srec -r wlan0 rf010409.hex
# card is now in normal mode

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA




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