[Soekris] Netgate cards on the Soekris net4521 boards

Tue Sep 28 20:21:54 UTC 2004

Please ugrade your firmware, there are some problems with this
firmware ... connection loss ... here is an upgrade howto

HOWTO to Upgrade Prism2 MiniPCI-Cards shipped by Soekris

1. get a notebook with minipci-slot

2. install linux on the notebook

3. build your own custom kernel

4. install prism2 driver

wget http://hostap.epitest.fi/releases/hostap-driver-0.2.4.tar.gz
tar -xzvf hostap-driver-0.2.4.tar.gz

# -> uncomment PRISM2_DOWNLOAD_SUPPORT and PRISM2_NON_VOLATILE_DOWNLOAD
# in the following file
vi driver/modules/hostap_config.h

make
make install
modprobe hostap_pci

# check if the driver is loaded
dmesg
cd ..

5. get the utils

wget http://hostap.epitest.fi/releases/hostap-utils-0.2.4.tar.gz
tar -xzvf hostap-utils-0.2.4.tar.gz
cd hostap-utils-0.2.4
make

# check first if the tools and driver is working
./hostap_diag wlan0

# should be displayed for example:
NICID: id=0x8013 v1.0.0 (PRISM II (2.5) Mini-PCI (SST parallel flash))
PRIID: id=0x0015 v1.1.0
STAID: id=0x001f v1.4.9 (station firmware)

cd ..

6. get the firmware

wget http://www.netgate.com/support/prism_firmware/primary.tar.gz
wget http://www.netgate.com/support/prism_firmware/1.8.0.tar.gz

# please be shure to get the right firmware, the NICID is necessary
# in our example 0x8013
# there is a station firmware 1.8.3 availiable but not for
# this card

tar -xzvf primary.tar.gz
tar -xzvf 1.8.0.tar.gz

7. upgrade

cd hostap-utils-0.2.4
cp ../primary/pk010101.hex .
cp ../1.8.0/sf010800.hex .

# test firmware compatibiliy
prism2_srec -v wlan0 pk010101.hex sf010800.hex

# if the result is "ok"
# flash the firmware
prism2_srec -v -f wlan0 pk010101.hex sf010800.hex

# verify the upgrade
./hostap_diag wlan0

# should be displayed for example:
NICID: id=0x8013 v1.0.0 (PRISM II (2.5) Mini-PCI (SST parallel flash))
PRIID: id=0x0015 v1.1.1
STAID: id=0x001f v1.8.0 (station firmware)

8. usefull links

# Mini-howto on Flashing Intersil Prism Chipsets
http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/

# Readme netgate
http://www.netgate.com/support/prism_firmware/readme.html

# Host AP driver for Intersil Prism2/2.5/3 and WPA Supplicant
http://hostap.epitest.fi/

2004/07/30 Thomas Boernert

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 21:19, David Young wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 11:08:46AM -0500, Chandrakanth Chereddi wrote:
> > And one last question, are the Prism cards better supported than the
> > Aethoros cards in Linux?
> 
> FWIW, I have recently experienced serious Prism misbehavior in ad hoc
> mode under marginal link conditions.  I'm running 1.4.9 firmware, which
> previously seemed to operate correctly in ad hoc mode.  Maybe more
> up-to-date firmware fixes this---but I'd sure like to see a ChangeLog
> that says so before I invest a lot of time and effort into upgrading
> all my Prism radios!
> 
> Dave