[MLB-WIRELESS] RICOH Cards in PCI2.0 boxen

[Jason Hecker]

The Airo-352 card moves in and out of the Belkin PLX adapter effortlessly.  I
guess even 1/2 a millimetre here or there can make all the difference.  When
trying to use just the ejector button, the whole casing starts to flex.  I
guess it needs a few insertion iterations to loosen it up.  There are no bent
pins in either cradle.

I am using Linux kernel 2.4.18 and the card services 3.1.33 (latest).  I did
the make config, make install and for good measure rebooted and the modules
all load, as lsmod attests to.  But... even my PLX adapter driver loaded.
The problem is, interrupts never worked on the PLX adapter in the PCI2.0
machine whereas they do on my late model PCI2.2 machine.

I am trying to get it to work in a FIC PA-2007 board which has the VIA VP2
chipset (VT82C586A/VT82C595).  There is no beep when I insert or remove the
wireless card.  Interrupt count in /proc/interrupts is 0.  I would assume an
IRQ would be generated when the card is inserted or removed... this isn't
happening so it's just not working.  Humph.  And double Humph.

The R5C475II chipset data sheet at
http://www.ricoh.co.jp/LSI/english/spec/assp/5c475/5c475.html says it's
PCI2.2.  I have come to the conclusion that with this old board anything
PCI2.2 will not work at all.  My D-Link 520 didn't, the PLX adapter didn't
and now this Ricoh based adapter doesn't.  This conclusion only applies to my
board.  I don't know what the story would be for anyone with say, Intel
chipsets or VIA chipsets with different BIOSs.  My next step is to try
something USB, but my choice there is limited to what's listed in the table
on http://www.linux-wlan.com/linux-wlan/ .

You may well wonder why I am being so bloody minded about trying to use an
 old cruddy Super7 board, but I figure Socket/Super7 based computers are the
 machines of choice for anyone wanting to run a wireless access point be it
 using Linux, *BSD or some Windows variant simply because they are cheap/free
 and more than ample to be firewall/routers you can leave on all the time and
 forget about.

So unless you or someone else can help me out in the next few days, I will be
selling my PCMCIA based hardware at the meeting on Friday in order to fund
some USB devices.

jASON


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