powerbook 6,8 progress and Airport issues!

[Emmanuel Galatoulas <galas@tee.gr>]

Hi all!

i am quite exciting because i have managed to get a
compiled kernel to BOOT properly on my powerbook G4 ver 6,8
after almost 6 months, a few fruitless attempts in IRC and
a couple of messages to the list, The answer came in the form
of an amazing hack by Guy Yasko. I quote his reply:

==============================================
Hello,
I can now boot 2.6.14.3.  I was able to do this after
I commented out the

pmac_tweak_clock_spreading(1);

line in arch/ppc/platforms/pmac_feature.c
=================================================

This bit did the trick so that now i can enjoy things like
sound, touchpad with synaptics capabilites and so on
which make this powerbook really excellent!

Anyway, the most serious remaining issue is the Aiport thing!
Although I have compiled the required stuff from the recently
reversed engineered bcm project, and altough i can load the modules
and iwconfig sees correctly the interface (as eth2)
it cannot get assocciated with the access point!!!
I have tried static IP etc with no success.
Actually when i try to run

ifup eth2

what i get is

SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory

ie. the interface seems as if doesn't exist

Moreover this is what my dmesg reads regarding bcm43xx:

========================================
bcm43xx driver 0.0.1
bcm43xx: Chip ID 0x4306, rev 0x3
bcm43xx: Number of cores: 5
bcm43xx: Core 0: ID 0x800, rev 0x4, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 1: ID 0x812, rev 0x5, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 2: ID 0x80d, rev 0x2, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 3: ID 0x807, rev 0x2, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 4: ID 0x804, rev 0x9, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Detected PHY: Version: 2, Type 2, Revision 2
bcm43xx: Detected Radio:  ID: 2205017f (Manuf: 17f Ver: 2050 Rev: 2)
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load
failed.
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load
failed.
======================================================

any ideas how to get through these errors???


thanks in advance and foremostly
for the power that  the community is!!!!
keep up the excellent work!!!!


Emmanuel Galatoulas