2008-12-03 11:50:13

by Michael Jarosch

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: "Artem Onair Comcard 11": Variation found!

Hi there!

I recently bought a WLAN-PCMCIA-adaptor from Ebay, named "ARtem Onair
Comcard 11", which is reported to work with linux on several places in
the internet. Well - my special card doesn't work. But this is not a
"How can I get my device to work with Linux" issue, I promise! I did
some investigation about this card, which I want to tell you, and I hope
that this will help someone of the kernel-team to get things right!

O.k. - here's what I found:

My card's got an alternate label on the backside, saying:
"CC-W11-EMB PC-ETS-128"

The modalias of the card looks like this:
#cat /sys/bus/pcmcia/devices/1.0/modalias
pcmcia:m0268c0003f06fn00pfn00pa7CE6F45Bpb427B2E41pc3284C1FFpd00000000

The PCMCIA-Subsystem of a recent Kernel (2.6.26) prints out:
#pccard ident
Socket 1:
product info: "ARtem", "Onair", "Version 1.0", ""
manfid: 0x0268, 0x0003
function: 6 (network)

When I plug this card to my Debian Laptop, there won't happen that much.
No module is loaded. The kernel just prints out some stuff
to /var/log/syslog, saying:

kernel: pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 1
kernel: cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
kernel: pcmcia: registering new device pcmcia1.0

No big surprise: There is no kernel module with a fitting modalias!


I also tried this card with Deli-Linux 0.7, a distro, which is specially
made for old Devices. It uses the 2.4.34.4 kernel. There's also no
module loading when plugging in the card - initially.
In the PCMCIA configuration file /etc/pcmcia/config I found something
interesting:

card "ARtem Onair Version 1.0"
#version "ARtem", "Onair", "Version 1.0"
manfid 0x0268, 0x0001
bind "orinoco_cs"

which says to me that another Version of the ARtem Onair card with the
same chipset, but another manfid would just work. I edited the file and
changed the manfid from 0x0001 to 0x0003 and restarted the
pcmcia-daemon. When I now plug the card in, the modules "orinoco_cs",
"orinoco" and "hermes" are loaded and I get a network device, named
eth0. Now I can do some configuration with iwconfig. I also tried
changing the driver to "wavelan_cs" (because of an entry on
tuxmobil.org, look here: http://tuxmobil.org/pcmcia_ci10339.html ) -
looks the same to me.

I don't know if this card does perfectly work with this driver. Scanning
(with "iwlist eth0 scanning") is not supported and I can get no
WEP-connection with any accesspoints at home - simply because there
aren't any accesspoints that supports WEP. There would be some WPA2-APs,
but the package wpa-supplicant is not included in Deli-Linux. So: I
haven't managed to get a wifi-connection with this card and these
drivers!

BUT: It doesn't seem to my that support for this card on a recent kernel
is far away. And maybe someone with better capabilities than me should
get this thing done.

I'm very interested in helping! I want this device working, so don't
hesitate asking me!

greetings
Mitsch Jarosch


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2008-12-05 11:30:21

by Andrey Panin

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Subject: Re: "Artem Onair Comcard 11": Variation found!

On 338, 12 03, 2008 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Michael Jarosch wrote:
> Hi there!
>
> I recently bought a WLAN-PCMCIA-adaptor from Ebay, named "ARtem Onair
> Comcard 11", which is reported to work with linux on several places in
> the internet. Well - my special card doesn't work. But this is not a
> "How can I get my device to work with Linux" issue, I promise! I did
> some investigation about this card, which I want to tell you, and I hope
> that this will help someone of the kernel-team to get things right!

Can you try to load orinoco_cs driver by hand and then add PCMCIA id of
your card using command below ?

echo "0x3 0x0268 0x0003 0 0 0 0 0 0 0" >/sys/bus/pcmcia/drivers/orinoco_cs/new_id

> O.k. - here's what I found:
>
> My card's got an alternate label on the backside, saying:
> "CC-W11-EMB PC-ETS-128"
>
> The modalias of the card looks like this:
> #cat /sys/bus/pcmcia/devices/1.0/modalias
> pcmcia:m0268c0003f06fn00pfn00pa7CE6F45Bpb427B2E41pc3284C1FFpd00000000
>
> The PCMCIA-Subsystem of a recent Kernel (2.6.26) prints out:
> #pccard ident
> Socket 1:
> product info: "ARtem", "Onair", "Version 1.0", ""
> manfid: 0x0268, 0x0003
> function: 6 (network)
>
> When I plug this card to my Debian Laptop, there won't happen that much.
> No module is loaded. The kernel just prints out some stuff
> to /var/log/syslog, saying:
>
> kernel: pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 1
> kernel: cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
> kernel: pcmcia: registering new device pcmcia1.0
>
> No big surprise: There is no kernel module with a fitting modalias!
>
>
> I also tried this card with Deli-Linux 0.7, a distro, which is specially
> made for old Devices. It uses the 2.4.34.4 kernel. There's also no
> module loading when plugging in the card - initially.
> In the PCMCIA configuration file /etc/pcmcia/config I found something
> interesting:
>
> card "ARtem Onair Version 1.0"
> #version "ARtem", "Onair", "Version 1.0"
> manfid 0x0268, 0x0001
> bind "orinoco_cs"
>
> which says to me that another Version of the ARtem Onair card with the
> same chipset, but another manfid would just work. I edited the file and
> changed the manfid from 0x0001 to 0x0003 and restarted the
> pcmcia-daemon. When I now plug the card in, the modules "orinoco_cs",
> "orinoco" and "hermes" are loaded and I get a network device, named
> eth0. Now I can do some configuration with iwconfig. I also tried
> changing the driver to "wavelan_cs" (because of an entry on
> tuxmobil.org, look here: http://tuxmobil.org/pcmcia_ci10339.html ) -
> looks the same to me.
>
> I don't know if this card does perfectly work with this driver. Scanning
> (with "iwlist eth0 scanning") is not supported and I can get no
> WEP-connection with any accesspoints at home - simply because there
> aren't any accesspoints that supports WEP. There would be some WPA2-APs,
> but the package wpa-supplicant is not included in Deli-Linux. So: I
> haven't managed to get a wifi-connection with this card and these
> drivers!
>
> BUT: It doesn't seem to my that support for this card on a recent kernel
> is far away. And maybe someone with better capabilities than me should
> get this thing done.
>
> I'm very interested in helping! I want this device working, so don't
> hesitate asking me!
>
> greetings
> Mitsch Jarosch

2008-12-17 09:33:30

by Michael Jarosch

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: "Artem Onair Comcard 11": Variation found!

Am Freitag, den 05.12.2008, 14:30 +0300 schrieb Andrey Panin:
> On 338, 12 03, 2008 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Michael Jarosch wrote:

> > I recently bought a WLAN-PCMCIA-adaptor from Ebay, named "ARtem
Onair
> > Comcard 11", which is reported to work with linux on several places
in
> > the internet. Well - my special card doesn't work. [...] I did
> > some investigation about this card, which I want to tell you, and I
hope
> > that this will help someone of the kernel-team to get things right!
>
> Can you try to load orinoco_cs driver by hand and then add PCMCIA id
of
> your card using command below ?
>
> echo "0x3 0x0268 0x0003 0 0 0 0 0 0 0"
>/sys/bus/pcmcia/drivers/orinoco_cs/new_id

It works (partly)!
I got an ethernet device with ifconfig, called ethX. And I can do some
scanning with iwlist!

What I can't do is: switching to another channel (with "iwconfig eth0
channel 9" f.e.) - my device is always on channel 3, but the only AP I
could connect to is channel 9. So - still - I can't proof that the
card's now able to build a wireless connection with that driver. But
I'll keep going! Today, I've only got LXDE installed, but the next days
I'll try out gnome and it's network-manager and keep you up to date.

This is the output of "iwlist eth0 event":
eth0 Wireless Events supported :
0x8B04 : Set Frequency/Channel (kernel generated)
0x8B06 : Set Mode (kernel generated)
0x8B13 : Spy threshold crossed
0x8B15 : New Access Point/Cell address - roaming
0x8B19 : Scan request completed
0x8B1A : Set ESSID (kernel generated)
0x8B2A : Set Encoding (kernel generated)
0xBC00 : Tx packet dropped - retry exceeded


I also tried the "echo ..." command you sent me with the wavelan_cs
driver - it gave me an ethernet device but I couldn't do nothing with
it: So, one thing is clear: The tuxmobil.org entry is wrong. orinoco_cs
is the right driver! (At least, it is better than the wavelan_cs
driver...)

Greetings and many thanks!
Mitsch


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2009-01-13 15:57:59

by Michael Jarosch

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Subject: Re: "Artem Onair Comcard 11": Variation found!

Hi there!

A month has passed and so I'm writing you the latest news...

First a summary:

1) Bought an "Artem Onair Comcard 11". Label on the back says:
"CC-W11-EMB" "PC-ETS-128"
"2,4 GHz 11 Mb/s DSSS WEP 128"

2) Plug the card to three laptops.
Laptop #1: Toshiba Satellite Pro 4820/Debian Lenny/Kernel 2.6.26
Laptop #2: IBM Thinkpad A21p/Debian Lenny/Kernel 2.6.26
Laptop #3: Toshiba Satellite 1110/Ubuntu 8.10/Kernel 2.6.27
no reaction on all laptops.

3) Found out, that there's no matching modalias for this card in no
module.

4) Found out, that the module for this card should be "orinoco_cs".

5) Asked Pavel Roskin to add the missing modalias. He sent a patch to
kernel.org. It's not included, yet.

6) With a little trick (echo a modalias to .../orinoco_cs/new_id) I can
use the driver with this card.



O.k., this was a brief summary. Now to my problem: On all laptops, it is
not possible to change the channel with iwconfig. I'm stuck to channel
3. Error message is:


Error for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) :
SET failed on device eth1: Device or ressource busy.


(It's also not possible to use wpa_supplicant. At least I didn't find
the right driver and I read in
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/66696 that there
isn't any. But I guess this is not a kernel issue.)

Conclusion: The driver itself works, scanning works and that means that
the driver is sending and receiving packages. But it's not possible to
change the channel and to use wpa_supplicant and therefore it's really
hard to connect to an AP.

I'm still ready to support you! ;)

Mitsch


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