[SOLVED] HP S3200N with built-in at76c503 wireless

[bidi]

Hey, I'll get right to the point! I'm using Debian Testing on a HP S3200n desktop.

I've had this desktop for a while, but never tried using the wireless functionality until now. It has a built-in Gemtek WL-280 which uses the at76c503 chipset (done my research). It's technically an USB wireless adapter, but it's built into the desktop, which is actually pretty cool. I also own a Netgear MA101, which has the same chipset, so I've had experience with this adapter in the past.

My problem is that whenever I do "ifup wlan0" I get the following output (over and over again):

DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 ... (blah blah blah)
send_packet: Network is down

With the old MA101, I used to be able to unplug then replug the adapter in, which generally fixed the problem (forced the firmware to reload), obviously, this is not an option in this case.

"dmesg" doesn't show anything about the firmware being loaded, which seems a little strange since, if I remember correctly, it used to with my MA101.

Has anyone run into a similar issue? If so, how did you fix it?

PS: I do have "atmel-firmware" installed from the non-free repo.

Thanks

[waterhead]

There isn't much info on this chipset at the LinuxWireless web site. Not even anything about firmware:
at76_usb - Linux Wireless

I looked up the module in the kernel sources, and it said to get the firmware from here:
Index of /atmel

Do you have the module loading? I'm not sure of the exact module name, but there are three listed in my /lib/modules/<kernel version>/kernel/drivers/net/wireless folder:

at76_usb
atmel_cs
atmel
atmel_pci

[waterhead]

I added a link to the firmware on the LinuxWireless/at76_usb page

[bidi]

Yes, the module is loading (it's the "at76_usb", by the way)! The firmware is not though, and I think this is the problem.

I'm actually fairly intimate with this chipset, as I've used another wireless adapter that has it (Netgear MA101), however, that one is a USB adapter, whereas this uses an internal USB connection.

The firmware is installed, by using the atmel-firmware Debian package, but it doesn't look like it's loading. I did see in one of those links you sent they mention using the atmel_fw tool, I'll give that a shot and see how it works.

[bidi]

Hmm, found out why it wasn't working! I guess this particular model I got did not come with the at76c503 chipset (as I read elsewhere), but instead it came with a Ralink chipset. I'm in the process of installing the rt73 kernel module, now. That would explain why the atmel firmware wasn't loading.

[waterhead]

Ah yes, you should always run the lspci and lsusb commands before setting up a wireless.

It looks like this chip needs firmware loaded too:
rt73usb - Linux Wireless

It can be downloaded here:
http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/dr....1.0.1.tar.bz2

Look at the output of this command for firmware errors:

dmesg | grep firmware

[bidi]

Yeah, it's working already! I ran lspci, but it didn't give me any useful info since this is technically a USB adapter. Didn't even think of running lsusb! Meh, important thing is that i have it working now, and I'm happy!