please help verify prism firmware broken-ness

Can someone help me verify that station firmware versions 1.2.0, 1.3.4,
and 1.3.6 do not honor a command to fix their transmit rate?

This is a *serious* problem for me. In poor link conditions, a Prism
card tries aggressively to raise its TX rate above 1Mbps, interrupting
normal station functions for about 100ms each time.

I am using NetBSD.  In NetBSD, when I set the rate to 1Mbps with the
command

  # ifconfig wi0 media ds1 mediaopt adhoc

the media status will not agree with the media setting:

  # ifconfig wi0
  wi0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
          nwid ojc
          powersave off
          bssid 02:05:72:37:ac:a8 chan 11
          address: 00:05:5d:da:ac:a8
          media: IEEE802.11 DS1 adhoc (DS2 adhoc)
          status: active
          inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
          inet6 fe80::205:5dff:feda:aca8%wi0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2

It is set to 1Mbps, you see, but operating at 2Mbps.  (That was a 1.3.4
station firmware.)

Note for the driver hackers: NetBSD sets the TX rate by writing a bitmap
indicating acceptable rates to RID 0xFC84. Is that the wrong RID? I have
verified as best I can that it writes the correct rate for the media
setting. I have also verified that the media status indication is a
reliable indication for the card setting, too.

Similarly, on a card with station firmware 1.2.0,

  # ifconfig wi0 media ds1 mediaopt adhoc
  # ifconfig wi0
  wi0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
          nwid cuw
          powersave off
          bssid 02:23:7b:25:c7:b1 chan 11
          address: 00:02:6f:01:c7:b1
          media: IEEE802.11 DS1 adhoc (DS11 adhoc)
          status: active
          inet 10.0.168.178 netmask 0xffff0000 broadcast 10.0.255.255
          inet6 fe80::202:6fff:fe01:c7b1%wi0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4

Even worse disagreement between setting and status!

Here are the boot messages from both those cards. The first is
a LinkSys WMP11.

  wi0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0: Intersil Prism2.5 Wireless Lan
  wi0: interrupting at irq 11
  wi0: 802.11 address 00:06:25:a7:a1:f6
  wi0: using RF:PRISM2.5 MAC:ISL3874A(Mini-PCI)
  wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (1.0.5), Station (1.3.4)
  wi0: supported rates: 1Mbps, 2Mbps, 5.5Mbps, 11Mbps

The second is a Senao 200mW card w/ external antenna connectors.

  wi0 at pcmcia1 function 0: INTERSIL, HFA384x/IEEE, Version 01.02
  wi0: 802.11 address 00:02:6f:01:c7:b1
  wi0: using RF:PRISM2.5 MAC:ISL3873B(PCMCIA)
  wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (1.0.5), Station (1.2.0)
  wi0: supported rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
[email protected]      Engineering from the Right Brain
                        Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933
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