Problem with wireless USB adapter Zonet ZEW2000 (Atmel chip)

[deerwood]

Hi all,

I have a problem with a wireless USB adapter:

If it is connected to an USB port while booting, the autoconfigure
fails, unless I specify the 'nousb' option. When I disconnect the
adapter Knoppix detects USB and my USB mouse correctly.

When I then connect the wireless adapter, the whole system freezes
immediately: no mouse, no keyboard any more, running processes stop,
e.g. a 'top' does not refresh it's output any more, the clock halts.
Thus I can't give any info about the adapter as seen from Knoppix.

There is no difference in behaviour when I specify 'noapic' at boottime.

The very same adapter works fine under W2K with a driver from Atmel
(in fact I'm writing this via a LAN connection using that adapter).

As of the 'Atmel AT76C503A based wireless USB devices' list at
http://www.wireless.org.au/~jhecker/.../usbtable.html
the chipset, the sourceforge and the AT76C503 USB driver are verified.

As of
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=1771
the driver at
http://at76c503a.berlios.de
is recommended. Has Knoppix V3.3 this built in? From
http://developer.linuxtag.net/knoppix/i386/
one can see a 'atmelwlandriver_2.1.2.2-1_i386.deb' is amoung the
sources. Is this the right one?

Any hints, how I can proceed further? Has anybody similar problems
and/or a solution, suggestions?

Thanks

Georg

Some info about my system:

Intel board
Intel PIII processor
Atmel USB FastVNET (AR)
Knoppix V3.3 2003-11-14

Output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 03)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
00:0c.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 06)
00:0d.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c810 (rev 12)
00:0e.0 Network controller: AVM Audiovisuelles MKTG & Computer System GmbH A1 ISDN [Fritz] (rev 02)
00:0f.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt848 Video Capture (rev 12)
00:10.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV4 [RIVA TNT] (rev 04)

[ghgeiger]

Please keep us informed on this, as the atmel chipset seems to be a popular one. I have been having the same problems with both of my wi-fi cards:
Belkin FD6020v2 (PCMCIA)
Iblitzz BWU613 (USB, this thing has some incredible range)

The first time I booted up with K3.3-11-14, it actually booted while the usb iblitzz was plugged in. I tried using the wireless configurator, but it did not seem to work. Future attempts to boot, with device plugged in, hung during autoconfiguration.

Any help would be appreciated
greg

[deerwood]

First success.

The driver in the current Knoppix distribution seems to be the sourceforge
one, which has KNOWN problems with usb-uhci.

Quote from the 'readme'

There is a serious "conflict" with the usb-uhci driver and atmel's board
which leads to one problem. The system hangs :( .....

This never happens with the uhci driver.

But on my boot, the usb-uhci driver is loaded.

What I did (in short):

- got the better driver from
http://at76c503a.berlios.de/
- compiled it (no problems)
- made /lib writable (in ramdisk)
- removed all old driver files in /lib/*
- installed the new driver
- plugged in the Atmel device

Voiala, Knoppix remains stable running,
'hotplug' did it's job, 'lsusb' reports the driver, iwconfig is usable.

Details will follow.

Thanks to all people making Knoppix available!

best regards

Georg

[deerwood]

Details on replacing the sourceforge driver for the Atmel chip with the berlios driver from http://at76c503a.berlios.de/ for KNOPPX V3.3 2003-11-14:

Under W2K I got the driver and saved it on a my C: FAT filesystem. I got the Version 0.11 beta 6 from the CVS.

Unplugged the Atmel device and bootet Knoppix from CD.

Mounted /dev/hda1 on /mnt/hda1 read/write.

cd to the driver archive, then:

# unpack archive V 0.11 beta 6
tar xzvf at76c503a.tar.gz

# cd into dir with Makefiile
cd at76c503a/at76c503a

# alternatively with V 0.10:
#tar xzvf at76c503-0.10.tar.gz
#cd at76c503a-0.10

# compile source
make

# become superuser
su

# copy /lib from readonly CD to read/write memory
cp -r /KNOPPIX/lib /ramdisk/libmem

# relink /lib to the copy
ln -s -fn /ramdisk/libmem /lib

# look for old drivers
locate atmel

# old drivers are listed in the *.list file
cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/atmeldriver.list
grep '\.o' /var/lib/dpkg/info/atmeldriver.list

# remove old drivers
rm `grep '\.o' /var/lib/dpkg/info/atmeldriver.list`

# finally: install the new drivers
make install

Now I plugged in the Atmel device: yes, Knoppix remains alive, 'lsusb' shows the new driver installed, with 'iwconfig wlan0' I can configure it.

Configure details will follow.

Thanks to the driver authors, well done!

Georg

[deerwood]

I write this from Knoppix via a LAN connection using the Atmel wireless adapter (Zonet ZEW2000). So you see: the new berlios driver works!

Configuration details:

My accesspoint is configured to accept only specific MAC adresses and WEP encrypted connections. Thus some config of the Atmel wlan adapter is neccessary:

# become root
su

# configure the adapter
iwconfig wlan0 essid 'homewlan'
iwconfig wlan0 channel 10
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 nick 'homewlan'
iwconfig wlan0 key XXXX-XXXX-XX restricted
iwconfig wlan0 rate 11M
iwconfig wlan0 rate auto

# display setting for check
iwconfig wlan0

# bring up the interface
ifconfig wlan0 up

# get a DHCP lease from the access point router
pump -i wlan0

# check the routing table
netstat -r

# output for me:
#Kernel IP routing table
#Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
#192.168.1.0     *               255.255.255.0   U         0 0          0 wlan0
#default         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 wlan0

# ping the access point router
ping -c 2 192.168.1.1

# ping a foreign host
ping -c 4 www.osgev.de

Both pings should succeed.

Question:

What to do to get the berlios drivers into one of the next Knoppix distributions instead of the sourceforge ones?

Thanks to all making this possible

Georg

[ghgeiger]

How do we go about asking Mr. Knopper to include this new driver in the next CD Distro?
It would be nice to finally have a cd that I could just stick in and have everything on my computers work (wlan seems to be the last piece of non-working hardware for me)!!!

Thanks for the good work!

greg