Hello,
I have several of Cisco's AiroNet 350 PC Cards (PCMCIA), which I am interested in using in a research project where I will need to be able to adjust the transmission power. Currently I have been using Linux with kernel 2.4.20 (stock RedHat 9.0 system). While the cards work great, I have heard that the newer firmware revisions include many improvements in power management for these cards, which will be important for my application in battery powered devices.
Using a windows laptop (and the appropriate Cisco utility which takes the .IMG file contained in any one of the self-extracting .EXEs listed below), I upgraded the cards to the latest available firmware, 350-PCMCIA-LMC-PCI-v54100.exe
The card then ceased to function under linux, presumably because the linux drivers are not as recent as the windows drivers. The error message, upon card insertion:
airo: Max tries exceeded waiting for command
airo: MAC could not be enabled
airo_cs: RequestConfiguration: Operatoin succeededd
So, I downgraded the firmware several times. None of these worked either:
350-PCMCIA-LMC-PCI-v54010.exe
340-350-PCMCIA-LMC-PCI-v53017.exe
350-340-PCMCIA-LMC-PCI-v52017.exe
350-340-4800-PCMCIA-LMC-PCI-v50220.exe
350-340-4800-PCMCIA-LMC-PCI-v50219.exe
So I jumped to the bottom of the list and tried 350-PCMCIA-LMC-PCI-v423.exe, which worked, allowing me to continue using my cards under linux. Unfortunately I did not check the firmware version before I started this upgrade process, so I'm not sure if I'm any better off now, or not.
I came across something on the Cisco website (forgive me for not being able to remember the reference) that suggested that the latest firmware supported under linux is 5.30.17. According to the experiment I performed above, however, this is not true, unless I need to upgrade the drivers in my linux installation.
Searching the web for these error messages, I see people who have encountered them, but there is little talk of the firmware.
I suspect that with the proper linux drivers I should be able to use the cards with firmware 5.30.17, but I have been unable to find such drivers. Could you help me please?
Thank you for your time,
-Jon
