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IRQ settings for PCMCIA wi-fi cards



I see some others discussing successful wi-fi under debian - hope
someone has a hint on this one.

Debian - unstable with a 2.6.8 kernel.

It's a 3com OfficeConnect g card. With the prism54 drivers I get:

Oct  2 18:24:26 chris kernel: Loaded prism54 driver, version 1.2
Oct  2 18:24:26 chris kernel: PCI: Enabling device 0000:07:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)
Oct  2 18:24:26 chris kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:07:00.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
Oct  2 18:24:26 chris pci.agent[23723]:      prism54: loaded successfully

so - iwconfig eth2 gives:

eth2      NOT READY!  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Channel:6  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Tx-Power=31 dBm   Sensitivity=0/200
          Retry min limit:0   RTS thr=0 B   Fragment thr=0 B
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Now - searching the prism54 site gives a solution for NOT READY! by
bringing the associated interface up but ifconfig eth2 up gives:

SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory

eth2 is defined: 

iface eth2 inet static
  address 192.168.1.111
  network 192.168.1.0
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 192.168.1.1

So - I tried the ndiswrapper stuff together with the XP driver.

ndiswrapper app successfully converts and installs the driver in /etc,
and modprobe loads the ndiswrapper module but with a -22 error code in
the logs. According to the ndiswrapper folks this is an IRQ conflict.

Sep 30 17:33:40 chris kernel: ndiswrapper: no version for "struct_module" found: kernel tainted. 
Sep 30 17:33:40 chris kernel: ndiswrapper version 0.10-1 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=no) 
Sep 30 17:33:40 chris kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:07:00.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
Sep 30 17:33:40 chris kernel: ndiswrapper: using irq 11 
Sep 30 17:33:40 chris kernel: ndiswrapper (NdisAcquireSpinLock:905): Windows driver trying to use uninitialized lock ddb5d774, fixing it. 
Sep 30 17:33:41 chris udev: creating device node '/dev/ndiswrapper' 
Sep 30 17:33:43 chris kernel: 3c154g72.sys: probe of 0000:07:00.0 failed with error -22 
Sep 30 17:33:43 chris kernel: ndiswrapper: driver 3c154g72.sys (3Com,06/25/2004, 3.0.7.2) added

/proc/interrupts shows:

           CPU0
  0:   15675384          XT-PIC  timer
  1:         18          XT-PIC  i8042
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  7:          0          XT-PIC  parport0
  8:          1          XT-PIC  rtc
  9:         53          XT-PIC  acpi
 11:    4113377          XT-PIC  Intel 82801CA-ICH3, uhci_hcd,
  uhci_hcd, ohci1394, yenta, yenta, eth0, radeon@PCI:1:0:0
 12:        178          XT-PIC  i8042
 14:      98045          XT-PIC  ide0
 15:        148          XT-PIC  ide1
NMI:          0
LOC:          0
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

If I do that with the prism54 then eth2 is also shown on IRQ 11. Also
interestingly - IRQ 3 is used for serial and IRQ 4 for IR ports - but
they're not mentioned. 5, 6 and 10 are (as far as I can tell) not
used.

The ndiswrapper forum suggested either re-configuring IRQ in the BIOS
or turning of IRQ allocation via ACPI in the BIOS or booting with
acpi=noirq.

The only place in the BIOS where IRQ is mentioned is the setting of
IRQ for serial/IR/parallel ports (none on 11). ACPI is not mentioned
at all. Booting with acpi=noirq doesn't change the allocation here at
all (/proc/interrupts looks identical) but eth0 (onboard nic) and usb
stop working.

So - it appears that both drivers are loading - but that there's
something of an IRQ problem here. It's been years since I had to deal
with IRQs and that was under win 3.11 with a bios where you could do
allocations. I've never looked at IRQs under linux.

Anyone any hints on how to get any further on this one?

Regards

-- 
Chris



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