ndiswrapper and a prism GT chipset cardbus

[brain salad surgery]

hi,

i bought a wireless cardbus that has a prism GT chipset which
is NOT supported by the prism54.org project.

In fact, it falls under prism54 softmac linux project :
http://jbnote.free.fr/prism54usb/

It is still under development, i didn't even found a compiled
driver on this site (if someone finds one, tell me)

therefore, i'm using ndiswrapper, with the windoze driver
that came with the card (which work well under windoze)

with modprobe ndiswrapper, a new wlanX interface
is created, which shows as:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-55 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:23 Invalid misc:355 Missed beacon:0

using iwconfig, it is impossible to change anything, nor essid, the key or the
mode (managed). I wish to connect to an access point whose
essid is gentoo (no wep, no wpa, only mac filtration using dhcp).
The card seems to work, though, since i can see
my access point (but no dhcp connection is possible).

root@laptop - > iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:10:A7:2E:D6:99
ESSID:"gentoo"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-41 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s
Bit Rate:5.5 Mb/s
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=3


As you can see, the protocol mode of the access point is 802.11b.
Under windoze, the only i can connect to that access point is
by configuring the driver to use pure 802.11b mode.
This is not the default mode which is 802.11g
under linux and windoze. How to change this under linux? Do
ndiswrapper can be given options when loading ?

i can post the .inf and .sys files of the windows driver
i any other info is needed, just ask

[brain salad surgery]

i now am able to change what network type iwconfig report about that card
using :

iwpriv wlan0 network_type b

it should now work using "b only" mode
it does not change anything, it refuses to connect.

Therefore i gave a look at linuxant's driverloader
which is fine. I install with success the same
windows driver that i used with ndiswrapper.
Driverloader, through his web interface, offers
the same possible configurations for the
driver than in windows. Setting the b only mode
then lead to a success for the connection.

The strange thing is that i tested the
transfert rate (in 11Mbps) and i see
a sftp transfer of a big file start around
200K/s and drop in a few seconds to 15K/s.
Like if there were a lot of errors in the
transmission. Ifconfig reports no error,
nor the kernel. Strange.

but i don't like driverloader (i don't wanna buy
a license). i'd rather
use ndiswrapper instead, which is FREE and lighter
(only a module, not a whole service with
a web interface that requires a X server)
And this is only until an open source driver
is developped for prismGT using softmac.

is anyone would have any hint to
tune the driver or ndiswrapper so that
it could connect to the ap.


iwconfig (unfortunately there's no way i can change the essid/mode/access point) :


wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:100 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:1 Missed beacon:0



Here's what report iwpriv:

wlan0 Available private ioctl :
setwpa (8BE1) : set 1 int & get 0
setkey (8BE2) : set 1 int & get 0
associate (8BE3) : set 1 int & get 0
disassociate (8BE4) : set 1 int & get 0
drop_unencrypted (8BE5) : set 1 int & get 0
countermeasures (8BE6) : set 1 int & get 0
deauthenticate (8BE7) : set 1 int & get 0
auth_alg (8BE8) : set 1 int & get 0
ndis_reset (8BF0) : set 0 & get 0
power_profile (8BF1) : set 1 int & get 0
network_type (8BF2) : set 1 char & get 0


here's how the card scans my ap (which is a usb
dongle (zd1211) in master mode, of course, with a good signal, no
wep no wpa):

wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:10:A7:2E:D6:99
ESSID:"gentoo"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-63 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s
Bit Rate:5.5 Mb/s
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=3

i don't know what are these extras... ??



by the way, i still haven't configured any wireless or
wpa_supplicant file in /etc/conf.d/
and the wlan0 interface is set to dhcp in /etc/conf.d/net
(i tried static ip, of course, it didn't work better)

the ap works when trying to connect with another
identical usb dongle (dhcp settings are ok).

finally, the iwpriv command on the ap usb dongle shows...

wlan0 Available private ioctls :
list_bss (8BE0) : set 0 & get 0
card_reset (8BE1) : set 0 & get 0
set_auth (8BE2) : set 1 int & get 0
get_auth (8BE3) : set 0 & get 12 char
set_preamble (8BE4) : set 1 int & get 0
get_preamble (8BE5) : set 0 & get 6 char
cnt (8BE6) : set 0 & get 0
regs (8BE7) : set 0 & get 0
probe (8BE8) : set 0 & get 0
dbg_flag (8BE9) : set 1 int & get 0
connect (8BEA) : set 1 int & get 0
set_mac_mode (8BEB) : set 1 int & get 0
get_mac_mode (8BEC) : set 0 & get 12 char
save_conf (8BED) : set 0 & get 0
load_conf (8BEE) : set 0 & get 0


thanks