Wireless PCMCIA card, Not working

Forum: Networking
Topic: Wireless PCMCIA card, Not working
started by: reddragonlf

Posted by reddragonlf on Oct. 01 2008,00:41

So, I got a really old laptop the other day, and decided I'd put DSL on it. Use it every now and then for various web stuff, and because it sounded like a neat little project.

It's a Micron Millennia Transport Laptop, 133 MHz Pentium with 47 MB RAM and a 1.6 GB HD.

I put in a Lucent Technologies Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card, just to see if I could get it to work. From the verified wireless wiki page, the card actually matches the Orinoco silver model number "PC24E-H-FC". I'm pretty sure it should still work.

I've used all of the gui tools available in DSL, and nothing seems too work.

Just to be sure it wasn't the card, or a hardware issue, I loaded up Debian Etch, and it was able to connect to my local AP just fine. I had to do it via command line as it wouldn't load into the window system. But I was able to update the package list, download lynx, and browse pages.

I'm just a little lost as to what to try next to get it working.

Posted by curaga on Oct. 01 2008,13:02

Does the card light up?
Please post the output of lsmod, lspci, cardctl ls, cardctl info

Posted by reddragonlf on Oct. 03 2008,05:11

It lights up for Debian, but not DSL. Also, Using DSL 4.4.6.

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
soundcore 3428 0 (autoclean)
mousedev 3832 0 (unused)
hid 22788 0 (unused)
input 3168 0 [mousedev hid]
usbcore 58240 0 [hid]
ext3 64388 0 (autoclean)
jbd 46804 0 (autoclean) [ext3]
unionfs 67168 7
serial 52228 0 (autoclean)
ieee1394 183300 0
pcmcia_core   39840 0
apm 9768 1
rtc    7036   0 (autoclean)
cloop   39204 2
ide-cd 28576    0
ide-scsi 9040    1

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 430MX - 84237MX Mob. System Ctrlr (MTSC) & 82438MX Data Path (MTDP) (rev 02)
00:01.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 430MX - 82371MX Mobile PCI I/O IDE Xcelerator (MPIIX) (rev 03)
00:13.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev fe)
00:14.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 7548

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# cardctl ls
no pcmcia driver in /proc/devices

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# cardctl info
no pcmcia driver in /proc/devices

Posted by curaga on Oct. 03 2008,11:56

OK, your pcmcia chip isn't recognized. From google it seems to be
Cirrus Logic PD-6729/6730 [i82365 compatible mode]

First check if it has to be put into that mode in bios. If it can, it should be recognized automatically after the change. If not, try "sudo modprobe i82365".

After this, either auto-recognition or the modprobe, please post the output of those three commands again, and the last 10 lines of "dmesg" too.

Posted by reddragonlf on Oct. 03 2008,13:41

From the looks, I don't have the option of changing the bios settings for pcmcia. I have options for everything else, except that. It's rather limited with what can be changed though.

As for modprobe. It didn't work quite like I was hoping.

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# modprobe i82365
/lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/i82365.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/i82365.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/driver/pcmcia/i82365.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/driver/pcmcia/i82365.o: insmod i82365 failed

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# cardctl ls
no pcmcia driver in /proc/devices

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# cardctl info
no pcmcia driver in /proc/devices

Code Sample

[/home/dsl]# dmesg |tail -n 10
<6>usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
<6>usb.c: registered new driver hid
<6>hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Voljtech Pavlick <vojtech@suse.cz>
<6>hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
<6>mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
<6>kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
<4>EXT3-fs warning: maximal mount count reached, running 2fsck is recommended
<6>EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,1), internal journal
<6>EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
<6>Intel ISA PCIC probe: not found.

Posted by curaga on Oct. 03 2008,14:10

Hmm. Do you see IRQ, IO, other addresses for the pcmcia in bios? Perhaps you need to give those to i82365 for it to see it.

Posted by reddragonlf on Oct. 03 2008,18:16

The bios doesn't contain anything about the pcmcia, only IRQ, and IO options for Serial port, IR port, Audio port, and the Parallel port. Unfortunately, that's about as advanced as the configuration gets.

Any way of getting that information from Debian? I assume that since it's working in debian that it must be using the right IRQ or IO?

Posted by chaostic on Oct. 03 2008,19:26

Quote (reddragonlf @ Oct. 03 2008,14:16)

Since you have Etch working with the pcmia card
Please post the output of lsmod, lspci, cardctl ls, cardctl info from etch

Posted by curaga on Oct. 03 2008,19:35

In Etch cardctl should be pccardctl..

Posted by reddragonlf on Oct. 04 2008,00:57

At least this time I didn't have to type it all up like the last few commands. Just appended to a file and transferred it.

Code Sample

lsmod
Module Size Used by
ipv6 213984 10
dm_snapshot 15644 0
dm_mirror 18000 0
dm_mod 48952 2 dm_snapshot,dm_mirror
loop 14216 0
orinoco_cs 15492 1
orinoco 34580 1 orinoco_cs
hermes 7040 2 orinoco_cs,orinoco
joydev 9152 0
tsdev 7616 0
serio_raw 6532 0
pcmcia 33852 1 orinoco_cs
firmware_class 9472 1 pcmcia
rtc 11572 0
parport_pc 31524 0
parport 32200 1 parport_pc
psmouse 34568 0
floppy 52004 0
pd6729 9952 4
rsrc_nonstatic 11904 1 pd6729
pcmcia_core 36240 4 orinoco_cs,pcmcia,pd6729,rsrc_nonstatic
pcspkr 2816 0
evdev 9088 0
ext3 116488 1
jbd 47272 1 ext3
ide_cd 35616 0
cdrom 32416 1 ide_cd
ide_disk 14848 3
piix 9220 0 [permanent]
ide_core 107760 3 ide_cd,ide_disk,piix
processor 23724 0

Code Sample

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 430MX - 82437MX Mob. System Ctrlr (MTSC) & 82438MX Data Path (MTDP) (rev 02)
00:01.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 430MX - 82371MX Mobile PCI I/O IDE Xcelerator (MPIIX) (rev 03)
00:13.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev fe)
00:14.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 7548

Code Sample

pccardctl info
PRODID_1="Lucent Technologies"
PRODID_2="WaveLAN/IEEE"
PRODID_3="Version 01.01"
PRODID_4=""
MANFID=0156,0002
FUNCID=6
PRODID_1=""
PRODID_2=""
PRODID_3=""
PRODID_4=""
MANFID=0000,0000
FUNCID=255

Code Sample

pccardctl ls
Socket 0 Bridge: [pd6729] (bus ID: 0000:00:13.0)
Socket 0 Device 0: [orinoco_cs] (bus ID: 0.0)
Socket 1 Bridge: [pd6729] (bus ID: 0000:00:13.0)

Posted by curaga on Oct. 04 2008,08:36

Oh. There's a specific module for it in kernel 2.6. I'm afraid we can't be of more help here. It might be possible to find a backport of it though. DSL uses kernel 2.4.31 currently.

Edit: Seems some people do have it working under 2.4 in i82365 compatible mode. The linux pcmcia howto:

Quote

On some old pre-PCI systems using Cirrus controllers, including the NEC Versa M, the BIOS puts the controller in a special suspended state at system startup time. On these systems, the pcic_probe command will fail to find any known host controller. If this happens, edit rc.pcmcia and set PCIC to i82365, and PCIC_OPTS to ``wakeup=1''.

Quote

The Cirrus PD6729 PCI controller has the fast_pci flag, which should be set if the PCI bus speed is greater than 25 MHz.

So find out your pci bus speed, and modprobe with wakeup=1 and if needed that fast_pci option.

Posted by reddragonlf on Oct. 04 2008,10:09

Well, tried both those options, it doesn't seem to want to load. In that howto, down a little farther at the System resource settings, it has some IRQ excludes. One specifically for this laptop.

It says to edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts and exclude irq 5, irq 9 On the Micron Millenia Transport. Also says that it might not be accurate and up to date.

Thinking that might fix the problem I installed DSL back to the harddrive... Then tried to edit that file, but it says it's read only. Is that the file that it loads from, and if so how do I edit it?

Posted by curaga on Oct. 04 2008,13:42

If you did a frugal install, that file is a symlink to /KNOPPIX/etc/pcmcia/config.opts. Remove the symlink, and copy the file instead - editable. To keep it around, add it to your backup (.filetool.lst)

Posted by reddragonlf on Oct. 04 2008,14:29

Mhmm, did that, doesn't seem to be working. Guess there isn't a whole lot that can be done at this point. Thanks for your help though.