prism54 to dsl?

Forum: Networking
Topic: prism54 to dsl?
started by: picnet

Posted by picnet on July 01 2004,20:20

Hi,
Im looking for a precompiled kernel that includes the prism54 driver for a SMC2835W card.

Machine Im fiddling with is a Thinkpad 560X 32MB ram / 20GB HDD - works fine so far, but none of the smc wifi cards Im using are working. (yes yes orinoco and all that, but I have 2 cards already and ive noticed the prism54.org site with some info that this driver is in 2.6.x kernels...)

The install...
So far Ive copied dsl from cd to flash drive, booted the usbboot loader from pcmcia cf card, done a hdd install to a spare partition, enabled apt-get & grabbed a few of my favorite toys.

Build time,
After that I grabbed the 2.6.6 kernel and behold unable to even run make - so apt-get install make, dsl then shits its pants with a dpkb-deb sub process killed by signal (broken pipe) (the broken pipe is why it crapped itself) - it then wants fileutils and make, fileutils is part of coreutils which also grabs pcmcia-cs for some unknown reason, this then prompty wipes out the 3com pcmcia card. <repeat above install process to get it back> and start again....

Any alternative routes to build a kernel or grab one precompiled with the prism driver in??

Thanks.
-Mike.

Posted by roberts on July 02 2004,01:35

No problem getting gcc g++ and make using the following:

1. boot from 0.7.1 cdrom
2. do a hard drive install with enhance option
3. boot from hard drive
4. use menu to enable-apt
5. edit /etc/apt/sources.list ( changed stable to unstable )
6. apt-get update
7. apt-get install make gcc g++

Good luck building your kernel

Posted by picnet on July 03 2004,08:02

Hi,
Thanks - Kernel build took around 5.5 hours on a p233 with 32mb ram! problem now is Im sure I selected a few pcmcia modules and at least 3com589 card and prism54 shows up when doing an lsmod
except the 3com card is inactive and the prism is minus the required firmware (ill get this.)

Framebuffer seems to have vanished..

You know the "Im sure I added/modulise that in the kernel" kinda feeling?

I still have the original dsl kern & switch back between the botched build & that one...

BR,
Mike.

Posted by ke4nt1 on July 03 2004,12:31

I need to do this to build a kernel which includes the
ICE 1712 sound module.. so I'll keep watching this thread
to see how your attempt at recompiling works for you..

73
ke4nt

Posted by picnet on July 03 2004,12:41

Hi,
Problem is framebuffer, ive compiled it in (as far as I could tell that is...) and vga=768 is a blank screen. If using vga=0 I get text vesa driver corrupts the screen (neomagic chipset on thinkpad 560x arnt not the best to configure I did it once with redhat 5.x but have since forgotten...) anyhow thats besides the point, 3com card is now working after I manually modprobed it and configured it manually (any idea why thats not done on boot up now?) Im used to redhat/fedora and not debian so when it comes to configurin dsl im a newbie...

The prism module is present in the kernel but doesnt load the firmware I will try with a different firmware to see if this works.

Actual switching from stable to unstable and then grabbing make/gcc etc was easy enough.

I'll report back on the whole event once its doing something that looks normal...

Posted by cbagger01 on July 04 2004,01:30

My advice is to grab the knoppix source files and build the kernel using all of the knoppix default selections in their config file. Make sure that the only thing that you change is the new settings for your prism driver.

Then recompile the kernel and take it for a test drive.

Just my $0.02

Posted by picnet on July 04 2004,10:19

Hi,
Ive built 2.6.6 which includes prism54 driver. (after 3 attempts) - framebuffer is working as is the 3com 359 card, so im back to where I started with dsl0.7.1 except it now has the 2.6.6 kernel.
Prism module is loaded but it seems unable to upload the firmware.
dispite the firmware being present and the hotplug firmware agents
at least being installed, they dont seem to get called properly... I visited the prism54 irc channel which had 28+ persons and asked how to manually upload the cards firmware. no response....

-Mike.

Posted by picnet on July 04 2004,10:35

SYSFS!

Ok sysfs was new to me, mount -t sysfs sysfs /sys followed by ifconfig eth1 (which is the wifi card) up finally uploads the firmware and gets it running :-)

So thats dsl with 2.6.6 & prism54 driver all working.

Now if anyone asks how I did it simple, 2 days work 3 kernel builds and a lot of reading...

-Mike.