Update: Problems with Oricoco silver

[IOXperts Support]

On Jan 20, 2004, at 9:06 PM, Dave Bonhoff wrote:
> If I power the card down and remove it, once it has been out for a 
> while it begins working again.  I'm not sure if this is a hardware 
> issue, possibly related to heat, or a software issue.  I'm leaning 
> towards software since the card worked fine using the open source 
> wireless driver (in OS X.2.8) and in X.3.2 with the IOXperts driver 
> until I put my Lombard to sleep with the card active, a few hours 
> after registering the driver!

Sorry for the delay--I've been ill recently, and am only now catching 
up with a backlog of support email.  If other cards in the same machine 
don't show the same symptoms, and if it's wavering in and out before it 
fails completely, it really sounds like a hardware problem of some 
sort.  I can't imagine what sleeping your Lombard could have done, but 
the driver generally either works or it doesn't.  In particular, the 
driver has no control over the signal strength or whether or not the 
card is searching for the base station--it just passes along what the 
card is reporting as its current status.  Clicking on "Apply now" in 
the preference pane will cause the driver to attempt to reset the the 
card, but if the card is already having problems, this may or may not 
succeed.

> The fact that flashing the firmware to a newer revision has made such 
> a dramatic change in operation further strengthens this feeling.

It's certain suggestive.  Unfortunately, in all other Orinoco Silver 
cards we've tested with, 8.10 and 8.72 versions of the firmware act 
identically as far as connectivity is concerned.

>   The complete lack of communication, so far, from IOXperts support 
> isn't encouraging though...

Sorry about that.  We're small enough that having one or two people get 
bitten by winter viruses can really impact our normally quick support 
turnaround time.

One thing that might help.  The next time it fails, open up a terminal 
window and type the command "dmesg".  This will display the most recent 
system log messages.  Whenever our driver gets unexpected results from 
the card, we log a system message.  If the output of "dmesg" shows a 
bunch of messages starting with "IOXperts 802.11 Driver", please copy 
those into an email message and forward it to support at ioxperts.com.  
That might help us track this down if it's a driver problem, or confirm 
whether or not it's a hardware problem.


Amanda Walker
IOXperts, Inc.