Activate PCIe slot deactivated by BIOS

[Dominic Fandrey]

On 26/05/2010 22:52, Rui Paulo wrote:
> On 26 May 2010, at 07:55, Dominic Fandrey <kamikaze at bsdforen.de> wrote:
> 
>> On 25/05/2010 13:57, Rui Paulo wrote:
>>> On 22 May 2010, at 13:27, Dominic Fandrey wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 22/05/2010 13:47, Dominic Fandrey wrote:
>>>>> Today the card arrived and the BIOS complains (HP 6510b):
>>>>>    104-Unsupported wireless network device detected.
>>>>>    System halted. Remove device and restart.
>>>>>
>>>>> The system boots if I turn off the wireless device in BIOS, but
>>>>> this means I cannot use it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Now, I could just get a BIOS image and exchange the device IDs
>>>>> there. But I wonder, wouldn't it be easier to just reactivate the
>>>>> PCIe slot through the OS?
>>>>
>>>> This e-mail is written through the ath wireless I got:
>>>>
>>>> # ifconfig
>>>> ath0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0
>>>> mtu 2290
>>>>    ether 00:24:2c:1d:f0:2f
>>>>    media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect mode 11g
>>>>    status: associated
>>>> ...
>>>> wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0
>>>> mtu 1500
>>>>    ether 00:24:2c:1d:f0:2f
>>>>    inet 192.168.178.41 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.178.255
>>>>    media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/36Mbps mode 11g
>>>>    status: associated
>>>>    ssid "Obi-Wan Kenobi" channel 7 (2442 MHz 11g) bssid
>>>> 00:15:0c:d5:37:a0
>>>>    regdomain 101 indoor ecm authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
>>>>    deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 2:128-bit txpower 20 bmiss 7 scanvalid 450
>>>>    bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi 7 roam:rate 5
>>>>    protmode CTS wme burst roaming MANUAL
>>>>
>>>> I achieved this by passing the BIOS check with the intel wireless and
>>>> hot-swapping it with the atheros card afterwards. This is impractical
>>>> and evil, so I'm still searching for a solution.
>>>>
>>>> But at least I know that the device works.
>>>
>>> HP laptops really dislike the fact that your card isn't part of the
>>> Centrino brand, so they halt if they find an Atheros. Your best
>>> option is to change the Atheros card EEPROM to match the device and
>>> vendor id of your wpi card. Then you also need to change the ath
>>> driver to attach to that device id.
>>>
>>> It's evil, but it's better than hot-swapping.
>>
>> Yes, but it still sucks. And I actually have no idea how to flash the
>> ath device. All the instructions on this I have found use Linux.
> 
> Please ask sam at FreeBSD.org about that.
> 
>>
>> I'd prefer to flash the notebook BIOS, but I have no way to defeat
>> its evil compression.
> 
> I think flashing the bios is more risky than fixing the EEPROM.

Yes, it's a philosophical thing. By flashing the BIOS I address the
error. By changing the wireles EEPROM I counter the error with another
error.

>>> The other option is to buy a iwn card which works better in FreeBSD
>>> than wpi.
>>
>> Nay, this is my goodbye to Intel brand wireless. I always thought
>> wpa_supplicant was to blame for unreliable connections, but it
>> all just works with the Atheros hardware.
> 
> Intel has made progress and I really think that they are on the right
> track to produce good cards.

While wpi is the first one in my care that does not work at all, all
other Intel brand wireless devices in my use have proven to be
at least unreliable.

So what if they work reliable one day. The Atheros I got is reliable,
now!
Not in a far fetched future that might never actually come to be.

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