notes.splitbrain.org

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
====== Conceptronic C22C on Linux ======

{{wlan:concept-front.jpg?250}} {{wlan:concept-back.jpg?200}}

This cards official name is //Wireless 22Mbps PC Card for Notebooks//. It's an 32Bit Cardbus card with the model name //C22C//.

Inserting this card immediatly froze my machine after printing these lines:

  cs: cb_alloc(bus 1): vendor 0x104c, device 0x8400
  PCI: Enabling device 01:00.0 (0000 -> 0003)

After disabling the cardmanager (''/etc/init.d/pcmcia-cs stop'') and I was able to insert the card without a crash and to reveal the following info with ''lspci -v'':

  0000:01:00.0 Network controller: Texas Instruments ACX 100 22Mbps Wireless Interface
        Subsystem: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8401
        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 9
        I/O ports at 4000 [size=32]
        Memory at 10800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Memory at 10810000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

===== General setup =====

I'll use a vanilla Kernel 2.4.26 from www.kernel.org with PCMCIA and Wireless LAN support. In userspace I use the latest ''pcmcia-cs'' (3.2.5-7), ''[[:hotplug]]'' (0.0.20040329-11) and ''wireless-tools'' (26+27pre22-1) packages from [[:Debian]]s unstable branch. Everything is done on my Fujitsu-Siemens [[:Lifebook]].

===== The acx100 driver =====

A GPL'd driver for the TI chipset is available here: http://acx100.sourceforge.net/

  $> wget http://switch.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/acx100/acx100-0.2.0pre8.tar.bz2
  $> tar -xjvf acx100-0.2.0pre8.tar.bz2
  $> cd acx100-0.2.0pre8

So far so easy. The driver needs a firmware which is, for legal reasons, not included in the download. This firmware can be extracted from the windows drivers (available at [[http://www.conceptronic.net/support/file_list01.asp?g=9&p=C22C&t=dr|conceptronic.net]]) or you can let the Makefile fetch and extract the needed firmware from the net. I go for the latter:

  $> make fetch_firmware

Now compile and install 

  $> make
  #> make install

Inserting the card no longer freezes the machine even with the cardmanager running but ''dmesg'' shows still some errors:

<code>
cs: cb_alloc(bus 1): vendor 0x104c, device 0x8400
PCI: Enabling device 01:00.0 (0000 -> 0003)
acx100: It looks like you were coaxed into buying a wireless network card
acx100: that uses the mysterious ACX100 chip from Texas Instruments.
acx100: You should better have bought e.g. a PRISM(R) chipset based card,
acx100: since that would mean REAL vendor Linux support.
acx100: Given this info, it's evident that this driver is quite EXPERIMENTAL,
acx100: thus your mileage may vary. Visit http://acx100.sf.net for support.
acx100_init_module: dev_info is: TI acx_pci
acx100_init_module: TI acx_pci.o: Ver 0.2.0pre8 Driver initialized, waiting for cards to probe...
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 01:00.0 to 64
Found ACX100-based wireless network card at 01:00.0, irq:9, phymem1:0x10800000, phymem2:0x10810000, mem1:0xd096c000, mem1_size:4096, mem2:0xd096e000, mem2_size:65536.
acx100_probe_pci: using ACX100 io resource addresses (size: 54)
hw_unavailable = 1
reset hw_unavailable++
acx100_reset_mac: enable soft reset...
acx100_reset_mac: disable soft reset and go to init mode...
ERROR: no directory for firmware file specified, ABORTING. Make sure to set module parameter 'firmware_dir'! (specified as absolute path!)
acx100_reset_dev: Failed to upload firmware to the ACX100
acx100_probe_pci: TI acx_pci: MAC initialize failure!
acx100_probe_pci: TI acx_pci.o: Ver 0.2.0pre8 Loading FAILED
</code>

Obviously it fails to load the firmware. The location of the firmware files has to be given as module parameter. First lets copy the firmware files downloaded by ''make fetch_firmware'' to some sane place. I suggest ''/usr/local/share/acx100-firmware''.

  #> mkdir -p /usr/local/share/acx100-firmware
  #> cp firmware/*.BIN /usr/local/share/acx100-firmware/

Now we need to tell modprobe were we put it. For the [[Debian]] way we just create a new file called ''/etc/modutils/acx_wlan'' with the following content:

<file>
options acx_pci firmware_dir=/usr/local/share/acx100-firmware/
</file>

Then run ''update-modules'' as root.

Note: For 2.6.x Kernel you have to put this file in the ''/etc/modprobe.d'' directory.

Now inserting the card loads the driver with the right firmware and registers a ''wlan0'' device to work with:

  #> iwconfig wlan0 essid "MeinKleinesWLAN" key restricted 's:13chars ASCII' mode Managed
  #> dhclient wlan0

Another card with wicked hardware mastered :-)