I think I wounded by Prism card

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 13:26:47 -0700 (MST)
> From: "M. Warner Losh" <imp at bsdimp.com>
> 
> In message: <20031211182330.0D26C5D04 at ptavv.es.net>
>             "Kevin Oberman" <oberman at es.net> writes:
> : 
> : I have an IBM ThinkPad T30 running CURRENT as of 12/9/03. On that day I
> : also updated the firmware on my WiFi card from 1.3.6 to 1.4.9 and my
> : troubles began. My wireless card starts and associated normally and runs
> : fine until I start a large transfer (such as an scp of a file of a MB or
> : so). Then I get the dreaded:
> : wi0: timeout in wi_cmd -x010b; event status 0x8000
> 
> That sucks.  I assume no other wi messages before that?  And that the
> - is really a 0 and you typed it in by hand.  Was this under heavy
> load?

Yes. I hand transcribed and clearly had my finger off by one.
> 
> : At this point the card is dead and I have only been able to recover by
> : rebooting the system.
> 
> damn.
> 
> : I will try backing out the recent changes to if_wi
> : and rebuild the module ASAP, but I only have wireless available at home,
> : so that won't be until tonight.
> 
> I wish I'd seen this earlier, I just committed something to
> releng_5_2.  You might try hard wiring it or something similar.

Unfortunately, I only saw it last night. I've been working late and had
not booted my laptop on the wireless for several days.
> 
> : First, any idea as to whether the recent fixes to wi to correct timeouts
> : in old firmware versions might have caused this? Or is it a problem with
> : 1.4 firmware? If it is the firmware, is there any place to find the old
> : firmware to back it off?
> 
> http://www.netgate.com/ has old images.

Cool! Just what I was looking for. (Not that I've found them at the
site, yet, but I have just started looking around the site. (Just found them!)

> : wi0: <Intersil Prism2.5> mem 0xf8000000-0xf8000fff irq 11 at device 2.0 on pci2
> : wi0: 802.11 address 00:05:3c:02:43:2d
> : wi0: using RF:PRISM2.5 MAC:ISL3874A(Mini-PCI)
> : wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (1.1.0), Station (1.4.9)
> : wi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
> 
> This should be a fairly good card to have.

It's always worked pretty well until last night. :-( My only prior issue
was locking up when I had the card active but no signal. That made it
lock up fairly often, so I now just load the driver when I need it.

I'll know more tomorrow when I have backed out the timeout adjustments
(which don't look likely to be the cause of the problem).

Thanks, 
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634