Linux 2.6.0-test9, a Belkin F5D6020 Ver 2 and a headache

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Marajin · Post by **Marajin** » Mon Nov 24, 2003 4:51 pm

I'm quite a happy little gentoo user with my laptop contently running on a 2.4.20-gentoo-r8 kernel with 3D Accelerated radeon M9 and wifi from my Belkin.

Recently after reading some of the stuff on this forum I figured what the hell I'd go for a 2.6 kernel.

Kernel compiled, rebooted, sound working, 3D Acceleration working, PCMCIA seemed to be working. I build the CVS atmelwlan drivers, they go in. Reboot to see them in action... the card doesn't detect at bootup. Scratching of head ensues..

Restart the PCMCIA service and then reinsert the card, and woot, up comes my network, alright I think and start surfing around and playing Mp3s from my samba share and 30 minutes later my network has hung. Odd I think, reset the network, off I go again, die again it does...

I then try more modern Atmelwlan drivers, reboot, once again failure to detect on bootup, in fact it tries to load "memory_cs" claiming my card to be an anonymous MTD device. cardctl returns blank info. Once again, restart PCMCIA service, reinsert card, up it comes.

I'm using yenta_socket for my PCMCIA (under 2.4 and 2.6)

Anybody have a clue why I need to restart the PCMCIA service after boot up to get it to correctly recognise my card under 2.6 but not under 2.4

krazo · Post by **krazo** » Mon Nov 24, 2003 10:42 pm

Yup I get the same problems with those drivers so I used the kernel drivers instead which require you to load the firmware before hand. I finally had enough of this fiasco and I got a Dlink DWL650 J3 this weekend so now I can use the orinoco drivers with no problems, I suggest you do the same.

Marajin · Post by **Marajin** » Mon Nov 24, 2003 11:40 pm

Money is a fine thing to have my friend, Money is a fine thing to have

Can you point me to a link relevant to how to use the kernel's own drivers?

And I can't find a DWL-650 on sale

There's a DWL-G650 but AFAIK linux still doesn't like 802.11g cards, right?

krazo · Post by **krazo** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 4:48 am

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... c&start=25
go there and look for a post made by me, it has some instructions.
IF you decide to buy the DWL 650 make sure it is rev A-J3 and nothing else, as the rest don't work. It says on the back of the box where the UPC code is. It will say H/W: J3

Marajin · Post by **Marajin** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 12:28 pm

Well I'm still having trouble with it not being able to detect what card is actually in the slot until I restart the pcmcia service and reinsert the card, but once I've done that it identifies it as an atmel_cs driver, loads it up, I get eth1.

I load my firmware, set my WEP, try to bring up the card and ...it doesn't work.

Life's a bitch huh?

Marajin · Post by **Marajin** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 5:45 pm

Just thought I'd let y'all know of success.

I tried to get the in-kernel drivers working with -test9, but it wasn't having it, somewhat more recently I installed -test11. PERFECT. The only issues I have now are:

1) PCMCIA needs to be restarted (i.e. /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart) and also it requires that I reinsert the card before it'll find it. However once that's done its fully functional and hasn't given me any connection troubles since I got it working.

2) My samba shares have gone odd. I can't seem to nail a pattern down but usually trying to access them will cause the command/program doing the accessing to just sit there for several minutes. They're unusable. Is this something to do with me compiling samba support into the kernel as well as installing samba? It's like the share is inaccessible, I've seen the same reaction on 2.4 using samba when there was a connection issue.

Otherwise, I'm muchly in love with 2.6! It just gives this impression of a much faster/more responsive system. Coupled with KDE3.2-beta2, it really impresses me as a desktop system. Ironically it's a laptop.

I will post my samba/PCMCIA issues in a seperate thread I think, just thought I'd let anyone who looked at this thread that things can work

jkalderash · Post by **jkalderash** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 7:34 pm

Sigh.. I'm not as lucky as you. I got so excited over the 2.6 final that I decided to give it another try, but I'm still getting the same annoying-as-hell blinking. Could you maybe post a brief step-by-step? I'm going to try the atmelwlandriver on 2.6, maybe it compiles now...

Marajin · Post by **Marajin** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:59 pm

Oh the atmelwlan driver compiles, it's just highly unstable (crashes on average in less than an hour). In order to get the in-kernel drivers to work, gotta go something like this:

1) Make sure the atmel drivers are compiled (in kernel or modules, shouldn't matter). Make sure you have PCMCIA, PCMCIA Network card and Wifi support also enabled.

2) Compile 'er up and get it up and running.

3) Edit your /etc/pcmcia/config file. You'll have to tell is that atmel_cs is something (There'll be a series of 2 line entries at the top of the file mentioning things like orinoco_cs and such like, just as the appropriate entry for atmel_cs).

4) Later in the file where it has the actual entries for the devices, enter the one for the belkin card and set the driver to atmel_cs instead of pcmf502rd (the atmelwlandriver).

5) You now need to get it to fetch the correct firmware. In the help about the atmel drivers in the kernel, it tells you where to find these. Compile the atmel_fwl program and make install the thing.

6) Edit your /etc/init.d/net.whatever file to include a line using /sbin/atmel_fwl <interface> /path/to/relevant-firmware where relevant.

This /should/ get things up and ticking. After it's done you just need to set the relevant config settings (iwconfig) and it should start to work.

Sorry I can't be more detailed but the harddrive for the laptop I did this on just failed (literally an hour ago). Good luck getting this up and running! If you have some instant messengers or something and wish to have a more realtime convo about it sometime, PM me and I'll give you the relevant AIM name/MSN Passport.

jkalderash · Post by **jkalderash** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:36 pm

Nope, same thing even once I'd enabled PCMCIA network. I'm going to give up soon, but can I just check on one thing - by Wifi do you mean the wireless networking option? Thanks muchly for helping out, and sorry 'bout your hard drive...

Marajin · Post by **Marajin** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:42 pm

I can't really remember.. Won't be able to check till I fork out the 100 quid necessary to buy a new laptop harddrive =/

But it sounds about right. Sorry I can't help anymore at the moment. I'll have to rebuilt the whole system when i get a new drive anyway, so I can make detailed notes of what is necessary if you like. I might be able to rescue my kernel config file and PCMCIA config files as it is anyway (The system is still bootable and the network is still alive, X won't start though, nor will apache and MySQL).

Knew I should have started scheduled backups to my server!

AthlonRob · Post by **AthlonRob** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 9:04 am

Sorry I didn't notice this thread earlier...

If y'all haven't, check out the different project mailing lists for the atmel chips. I've made several posts in at least the SF one about my success with the 2.6 series of kernels. The big problem with the SF drivers in 2.6 is they drop out after a few hundred MB of data goes over them (I had it figured out to within a megabyte).

The built-in drivers work great if you're using the latest pcmcia_cs utilities, lately hotplug version, and the firmware is in the proper place. I used to have problems requiring me to eject and reinsert the card before it was recognized, but I think my last upgrade of hotplug fixed that. Use ~x86.

I since fried my card and had to buy a PrismII based card that only works with the craptacular wlan-ng drivers... :-\

jkalderash · Post by **jkalderash** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 8:18 pm

I'm gonna cry - just exchanged the DWL-650+ my parents bought me for Christmas for a shiny new DWL-650 but it's M1 not J3. I looked all over for J3 but couldn't find it anywhere. This one doesn't work at all - "cardctl ident" says no info available. *Bangs head against desk repeatedly* Are you sure the J3 is that different from the M1? I'm going to go see if I can use yenta or something to make it recognize it. Works like charm under Windows of course. Bloody Windows.

alexboy · Post by **alexboy** » Wed Dec 31, 2003 1:10 am

I read a lot of entries about the card "Belkin f5d6020 vers. 2" - I use the 2.6 kernel and I tried to get worked this card but with no luck.

My last settings:

I enabled PCMCIA/CardBus support, WLAN support and the atmel driver, hotplug firmeware loading support in the kernel. (Is it necessary to use both PCMCIA/CardBus support and pcmcia-cs?)

I downloaded the atmel firmware and installed it with "make install-loader" and configurded the net.eth1with the line:

Code: Select all

/usr/sbin/atmel_fwl eth1 /usr/share/firmware/atmel_at76c50x/atmel_at76c502d.bin

I tried it with the atmel_at76c502d and e file!

After I brought up eth1 I get:

Code: Select all

 * Bringing eth1 up...
atmel_fwl: eth1 is not an Atmel interface.
 * Failed to bring eth1 up

So, can anybody help to understand this failure and to fix my problem. Thanks for all ideas.

alex

jkalderash · Post by **jkalderash** » Wed Dec 31, 2003 5:16 am

I'm sure I've seen that error before - I think it means that the card isn't being recognized properly. Try "cardctl ident" and check your dmesg/logs. You might also try loading the firmware and running dhcpcd manually. One thing you may have to fix is the line about CardServices release - tdb mentioned it in his howto.

(Unrelated to the Belkin, I've now got the DWL-650 to recognize the access point only when I'm about 2 feet away from it - what an accomplishment, I have a 14-foot ethernet cord.)

Marajin · Post by **Marajin** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 8:11 am

I have a problem somewhat like that. The solution is to restart the PCMCIA service, then manually eject and reinsert the card.

It should automatically pick it up after this. I have no idea why it does this. It's quite annoying.

One problem I have noticed is I'm getting extremely poor performance from this card using these drivers. I'm getting transfers at around 550Kb/s... at 10/11Mbit this should be twice that...

It's possibly just something silly I'm doing. No idea really.

Stu L Tissimus · Post by **Stu L Tissimus** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 3:51 pm

I'm also one of those poor idiots who bought a F5D6020, but I never really tried *hard* to get it working. So, I was wondering... What apps must I install to use wifi? I'm using 2.6.1-love2. I enabled Atmel in the kernel.

yahewitt · Post by **yahewitt** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 8:46 pm

woo hoo....*finally* got the little sucker to run with atmel_cs and 2.6.1-gentoo

we'll see how long before I break it again!