!! FreeBSD: problems with pccard not recognising wireless card.



Others may have encountered problems with the wi drivers in PC's running a variant of BSD.



The symptoms are that the wireless card is not recognised upon installing the card but the pccard works fine.



Typically a message such as:

 pccardd&lbrac;51&rbrac;: No card in database for "(null)"("(null)")

will show up when you startup or insert/powerup the card.  Usually this means that the pccard memory address is not set.  For details do '''man pccardc'''.



Addresses that are available are (purportedly) 0xd0000 (DEFAULT), 0xd4000, 0xd8000, 0xdc000.



Do:-

'''pccardc pccardmem 0xdN000'''%%%

'''pccardc power 0 0'''%%%

'''pccardc power 0 1'''%%%

for N 0, 4, 8 or c, and where the 0 in the power line is the Y in pccardY (1 or 0)



Note: The power cycling should be just the same as ejecting and reinserting  the card in the socket, however it saves you reaching behind the (most likely open) box or dislodging the not-screwed-down cradle (if you are anything like me when installing hardware).



then edit ''/etc/rc.conf'' to add the appropriate lines (On non-laptops FreeBSD assumes you will not have a pccard installed. At the same time if you do have one installed, the install program ( ''/stand/sysinstall'' ) finds it and asks if you want ot install the OS from it... Go figure)



For example:

 pccard_enable="YES"

 pccard_ifconfig="inet 192.168.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0"

 pccard_mem="0xdN000"

see ''/etc/defaults/rc.conf'' for more details, also '''man pccardd''', '''man pccardc'''



I have encountered one machine where this does not work. (Compaq Evo)

Sadly enough, Win2kPro on this box recognises the card without any problems nor new hardware dialog. *sigh*



Another hack (untried) for FreeBSD - PCI adaptors issues (FreeBSD freezing on boot, not recognising the card or the card not working). From a (http://www.samag.com/documents/s=7121/sam0205a/sam0205a.htm sysadmin mag article).



Add the following to ''/boot/loader.conf'':

 hw.pcic.intr_path="1"

 hw.pcic.irq="0"

I have no idea what this does.



also you may try turning off BIOS support for PnP or auto PCI config (or whatever you Bios calls it).

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