Problems with WMP54G Wireless Adapter

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

I am sorry Daniel, this is a known bug, see here:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/109227


In src/sys/dev/ral/if_ral_pci.c is:

static const struct ral_pci_ident ral_pci_ids[] = {
	{ 0x1814, 0x0201, "Ralink Technology RT2560" },
	{ 0x1814, 0x0301, "Ralink Technology RT2561S" },

And your pciconf:

 chip=0x03011814

This would normally force the card to associate with the
ral driver.  The problem however, which is discussed in a
posting here:

http://www.bsdforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=44385

seems to be that the card you have is using a special
"high output" version of the Ralink chipset which takes
different firmware - at least, according to the Linux
driver.  In looking through the BSD driver it seems to be
using the same firmware for all of the cards - perhaps the
driver author figured that all of the Ralink chipsets
used the same interface?  Quite often, manufacturers will
release a slightly improved chip and retain the same
interface - the new chip will have a different pci ID
and many times simply adding the pci ID into the existing
driver will get it to work.  That is what appears to have
been done with this particular driver.  Obviously it's not
correct.

What is likely happening is the wrong microcode is loaded
into the card by the driver and the card doesen't boot up,
thus the FreeBSD driver gets no response to it's initialization
sequence after attachment.

I would suggest you add on to the end of the existing PR.
You might also e-mail the driver maintainer.

The one good thing appears that there's been some activity
on this driver in the 7.X series, see here:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/117655

I would also try downloading the 7.0 beta and try loading that,
it may work.  Perhaps they fixed the driver there.

Otherwise, get a different card.

Ted

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Daniel Tate
> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 9:21 PM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Problems with WMP54G Wireless Adapter
> 
> 
> Even though I am relatively new to FreeBSD I have been able to configure 
> most everything flawlessly.
> There is only one problem that has needed fixing and that is with my 
> wireless adapter from Linksys that use the ral(4) driver.
> I have tried using ifconfig, yet I get a response saying that ral 
> doesn't exist even though in my kernel I have the appropriate driver.
> Also when I try dmesg | grep ral0 nothing comes up.
> After all of this I loaded the driver into my kernel using ndisgen(8) 
> and I got a response saying that there was a binary error.
> When I do pciconf -lv i get this:
> 
> none2 at pci2:2:0: class=0x028000 card=0x00551737 chip=0x03011814 rev= 0x00 
> hdr=0x00
> 
>     vendor = 'Ralink Technology, Corp'
>     class    = network
> 
> I have searched through various forums and even other mail threads but I 
> have found nothing of value.
> If more information is needed let me know.
> 
> Daniel
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