Re: [at76c503a-user] finally got usb smc 2662V2 working - here's my experience

Hi Hugh,

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003, Hugh Madden wrote:

> ...
> One thing I noticed was the fact that the card's external firmware was
> only successfully reloaded if the card was first unplugged and then
> plugged back in. Perhaps the card refuses to load it's external firmware
> more then once.

Yes, the newer firmwares (0.100.x, 1.101.y) refuse to reload the external
firmware while the device is powered.

> Out of curiosity, can anyone tell me what the difference between the
> internal/ external firmware? (Even a pointer to documentation somewhere
> would be cool).

Atmel splitted the firmware, because it didn't fit into the internal RAM
of the AT7C503A into an internal part (residing in the internal
memory and loaded by the USB DFU protocol) and
an external part (in external RAM, starting at address 0x6000 and loaded
by an Atmel specific protocol). There's no offical documentation on this
besides the Sourceforge driver source and the firmware itself
(ARM7 machine code) plus the "datasheet" from Atmel
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?family_id=657&family_name=Wireless+LAN&part_id=2578

/Jörg