Re: suse 10 prism wlan pcmcia card (YOU) SOLVED

ac wrote:
Using a dell inspiron 1100 which previously sucessfully ran suse 9.3
and used this pcmcia wlan card well - it is a no name brand - ieee
802.11g, but has a prism chip, and all I then needed to do was
download the prism driver etc via YOU, and the card was easily
working.

After a reinstall for various reasons, and now using suse 10, I find
the same approach does not work:

I get errors at the you stage of installing the prism driver. I have
tried several mirrors, so I do not think download corruption is
happening. All other you things have been/still seem - to be working
ok The sequence of events is:

============================================
yast (YOU) etc Download
Firmware for PrismGTWLAN cards (progress) retrieving
installintersilfirmware.sh: "Download Firmware for PrismGT WLAN
cards" ... ok installing installintersilfirmware.sh: "Download
Firmware for PrismGT WLAN cards" Error

Error window appears: Error installing patch
'installintersilfirmware.sh' ERROR(You:Postscript failed.)
/var/lib/YaST2/you/scripts/installintersilfirmware.sh (options) skip
this patch etc etc etc.....


note: I look, and I cannot see a directory named
/var/lib/YaST2/you/scripts in suse 10 - not sure if there should be
one

> ============================================
the card gets recognised (yast hardware info) -

info.product = 'Intersil ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette]' pci.product
= 'Intersil ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette]' info.vendor = 'Intersil
Corporation' pci.vendor = 'Intersil Corporation' pci.device_protocol
= 0 (0x0) pci.device_subclass = 128 (0x80) pci.device_class = 2 (0x2)
pci.subsys_vendor_id = 4704 (0x1260) pci.subsys_product_id = 0 (0x0)
pci.vendor_id = 4704 (0x1260) pci.product_id = 14480 (0x3890)
info.linux.driver = 'prism54'
======================================

(also posted elsewhere)

[...]

After looking at the yast script which seems to fail, with a lot of guessing, and following a nice lead from a post elsewhere by houghi (note 1) and a similar comment by Dutchy (note 2), I eventually discovered where a missing file could be downloaded from and copied it (and re-named it) to its apparent desired location, and the card now lights up, and seems to work :-)

Details:
A file ('firmware') needs to be got, and renamed to isl3890 and copied into the directory
/lib/firmware I noted a comment somewhere that the driver, as such, is already in recent kernel versions - I now realise that the driver is a separate entity from the firmware, both are needed.

I found the required zip file (note 3) in a location:
ftp://ftp.funkwerk-ec.com/artem/ClientCards/11g/CC-54g_v1017.zip
If you want to see the site directories, obviously just use
ftp://ftp.funkwerk-ec.com/artem/ClientCards/11g
Unzipping reveals it contains the required file
WLANDCB.arm

(Comment: It was *very* difficult to track down this new location, it took me most of a long day of persistance and some guessing, in my mostly novice state) (note 4).

However, after the experience of the day which included reading my first script file, along with more guesses, and some trial and error, I believe that the file available on http://prism54.org/fullmac.html stated to be '(for ISL3880 and ISL3890)', which has a link entitled
Version 1.0.4.3
http://prism54.org/firmware/1.0.4.3.arm
is the same size in bytes(93,996) as the file WLANDCB.arm mentioned above, and may be identical, without needing unzipping.

Installing:
Once obtained, the file WLANDCB.arm simply needed to be renamed to
isl3890 (please note lower case)
and copy, pasted into the folder
/lib/firmware
(for novices) - this pasting needs root privilidges, I find it convenient to use (KDE) System>file manager> file manager-superuser

PS
I also have installed, by intention or automagically, the package kdenetwork3-wireless (wireless card manager, includes kwifi), and use this for card configuration. A search in yast for 'wifi' is not successful, 'wireless' is.

The pcmcia card had been previously recognised (confirmed via yast) and I had configured it for dhcp etc.
I think I needed to restart something , anyway I rebooted as a no brainer, and quickly saw several nearby wlan networks showing in kwifi manager, although I did not connect sucessfully. Sensible neighbours, maybe, and I do not use wlan at this location.

note 1:
http://www.webservertalk.com/archive76-2006-2-1403666.html
note 2:
http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/lofiversion/index.php/t30232.html
note 3:
see the yast patch script installintersilfirmware.sh. It contains a requirement to unzip the file
/var/lib/YaST2/you/files/content/artem/artem000221/CC-54g_v1017.zip
note 4:
The site http://prism54.org/ is the obvious place to look, and I did this. I was very confused by the mass of detailed information available, and there was no mention of pcmcia either, which worried me. After false trails, I tried 'PCI' related firmware - see above reference to 'link entitled Version 1.0.4.3'. 'Pcmcia' probably is worth at least a paragraph heading I think. Presumably it is obvious to the initiated that pcmcia is a close relative of PCI (?). One false trail for me, was the site mention of:
========================================================
islsm :
This is the Linux driver for all the new Prism devices with an ISL38xx, even if they are SoftMAC. It supports USB and PCI.
For now, this is located at http://jbnote.free.fr/
========================================================
this led me to try following
'If you have a first-generation device, use one of the old sort for now (version <= 2.4.6.0), for instance this 2.4.3.7 firmware <http://jbnote.free.fr/prism54usb/data/firmwares/net2280/2.4.3.7/2.4.3.7.arm> and copy it to |[...]/firmware/isl3890usb|'.
(which did not work for me)

HTH
-- ac

.

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