no Irda HWaddr on Satellite M30 with smsc_ircc2 [SOLVED!]

[cyberjun]

Hi,
I am trying to make IrDA work on my Toshiba Satellite M30-742 laptop. After looking around I found that my chip should be supported by the smsc_ircc2 driver. Also the smcinit utility is needed. I did all that and got the interface listed in ifconfig output. However it doesn't have a hardware address. I have enabled all IR related options in kernel and dubugging of IR drivers is also on. Initially there was an IRQ conflict with the uhci_hcd module. So I compiled the kernel again with uhci_hcd as a loadable module. I have compiled the serial drivers also as loadable modules. Tried smsc_ircc2 without loading uhci_hcd to avoid conflict. Still no success. Now I don't get any error messages or irq conflicts. However the interface still doesn't have any HWaddr and none of the ir applications (like gnokii) work. Irdadump gives no output what so ever. Did anybody else with Toshiba satellite M30 laptop have success with IRDA?
Would highly appreciate all pointers and directions. By the way have exhausted all of google
Thanks.
--cyberjun

Specifics:
1. Gentoo Linux kernel 2.6.14
2. Latest smcinit and irda-utils

lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 21)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 21)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34M [GeForce FX Go5200] (rev a1)
0000:02:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
0000:02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (MOB) Ethernet Controller (rev 83)
0000:02:0a.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
0000:02:0b.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC100 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 33)
0000:02:0d.0 System peripheral: Toshiba America Info Systems SD TypA Controller (rev 05)

[cyberjun]

Finally after all these days of desparation and frustration, kernel upgrades, googling, posting messages on forums, I have got things working, that too on my birthday. WOW! its a great feeliing. I had rebooted my machine in XP for talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger. Then I thought lets see what details the device manager gives me about the SMCIRCC chip. The most significant thing I found was the IRQ number 7. All these days I was using the default IRQ 3. I had initially found a IRQ conflict with uhci_hcd at IRQ 3. However even after unloading the UHCI_HCD module, my IRDA failed to work.

I had actually tried even the IRQ 7 with smsc_ircc2 module, but the thing is I never changed the arguments for smcinit. So smcinit always used irq 3 to initialize the chip. Today after seeing IRQ7 in windows, I rebooted in linux and read the manual for smcinit. There I could see some command line arguments which included the IRQ. I tried using them but I kept on getting " smcinit: unable to convert FIR IRQ to number". I had installed smcint with emerge. So I separately downloaded the smcinit sources, changed the default value of IRQ to 7 (rest of the defaults were same as I had seen in XP) and recompiled. i executed "smcinit -v" and got the standard messages. Then I did "modprobe smsc-ircc2". It should be noted that I had changed the options for this module in the modules.conf file. So now both smcinit and smsc-ircc2 were working with irq 7. Then came the time to execute the acid test. I executed irdadump and to my surprise and amazement saw some data printed for the first time. It was lovely. I put my nokia 8310 in range and got it detected.

I have since installed gnocky, gnome-ppp and lirc. Have also attempted calling arbitrary numbers with minicom. So the problem is SOLVED!!!. Funny thing is that I still donot see the HWaddr in ifconfig output but who cares.

Well thats it.

Cheers,
--cyberjun