Atheros 5212 based card causing system freeze - suggested replacement?

[Adrian Chadd]

Hi,

On 28 August 2011 23:34, Geoff Roberts <geoff at apro.com.au> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a Netgear WG311T PCI wireless card which uses an Atheros 5212 chipset.
>
> I've just upgraded my FreeBSD 8 Stable (I'm tracking RELENG_8) hardware from
> an old Athlon 64 chip to an i3 chip on a Gigabyte GA Z68XP-UD3 motherboard.

Were you always running a 64 bit kernel? Are you able to please try
booting a 32 bit kernel?

> I am happy to purchase a new card as I'm guessing this may be an intractable
> hardware issue. I've included debugging information below just in case there
> may be a solution or anyone else has come across this issue.

I've heard from another user that there's been an issue with a later
NIC (AR5416) on 64 bit kernels but none of my test hardware is 64 bit.
It's possible the driver is doing something strange; it's also
possible the PCI bus glue is also doing something strange.

> I need a card capable of running Multiple Base Stations or Virtual Access
> Points (VAP) - another reason for looking for a newer card.

The NIC you have will do that just fine.

> Does anyone have any recommendations on a PCI or PCI Express wireless card
> that they have found works well in FreeBSD 8 or 9 with VAP capability?

> ath0: <Atheros 52127> mem 0xfbce0000-0xfbceffff irq 19 at device 0.0 on pci4
> ath0: [ITHREAD]
> ar5212Attach - sc 0xffffff0002447000 st 0x1 sh 0xffffff00fbce0000
> ar5212SetPowerMode: AWAKE -> AWAKE (set chip )
> ar5212SetPowerModeAwake: Bogus SCR 0xffffffff, PCICFG 0xffffffff

Right. That indicates something is very wrong.

Are you able to boot things on the older hardware and see what the
above debugging gives?
Eg what the attach line is on your amd64 box?


Adrian