[Soekris] Net4521 and AR5414 issue

[Eric Sargent]

Currently we are using the Mini PCI 802.11 (WLL4070LF – AR5414 chipset) cards in the Soekris net4521/4511 boards. On top of this, the device running a Linux 2.6.17 Kernel using the madwifi drivers for the wireless cards (Version svn r1716) and busybox for the standard utils.  The issue presents itself in the following way:

 

On most of the boards, the cards will come up just fine, and then we can use the wlanconfig and standard iwconfig utilities to configure from there.  However, in a few boards the driver fails to load completely from time to time.  The driver doesn't actually spit an error back, but the base "wifi0" device isn't created and thus can't be accessed to create the corresponding ethernet devices.  After investigating a bit more, it is evident that the reason the driver doesn't create the wifi0 interface is because it doesn't recognize the card as one which is supported by the madwifi drivers.

 

Under normal conditions, the card shows up on the PCI bus with a Vendor ID of 0168c (Atheros) and a Product ID reading 001b.  The issue then occurs at seemingly random (cold-boot) intervals, where a reading of lspci actually produces _two_ devices, both with the 0168c Atheros Vendor ID. One, however, is termed an Ethernet controller, while the other is deemed to be a Serial controller.  The Product IDs are ff16 and ff96 respectively.  Keeping this in mind, the madwifi drivers don't load fully due to the (bogus?) Product Ids.  This points to trouble with the hardware, either reading or writing the PCI IDs, as the drivers themselves behave as they should and don't initialize a card they know nothing about.

 

Overall, we have a 5% failure rate over 1097 power-ups at last count. The most distinguishing characteristic we've been able to find is that when utilizing an older set of Atheros wifi cards (SL-5354MP ARIES – AR5212 chipset) the problem disappears on every board involved.  Not sure whether the fault lies with the Soekris boards or the chips themselves (or myself..). Any sort of assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Eric Sargent, President

Nexus ISR, LLC

esargent at nexusisr.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.soekris.com/pipermail/soekris-tech/attachments/20061019/fb689aa4/attachment.html