how to patch your ram-download firmware image to allow more channels

[Michael Troci]

Hi all,

I am making reference to an quite old thread in this list. I appologize if 
this is a little bit oftopic.

My question is quite simple, but I haven't found a real answer to it so I 
try it here:
The are three different Senao NL-2511CD PLUS EXT2 as far as I know: 50mw 
(ETSI 1-13 channels), 100mw (CE 1-13 channels) and the 200mw (FCC 1-11 
channels).
Now the referenced thread talks about mahing a 200mw FCC card able to work 
with the 1-13 channels.
But what about the 100mw CE version ?
Is the only difference the ID 0x0103: Regulatory Domain List ? Where 0x030 
is for ETSI and 0x010 for FCC ?
Is it really the only difference ? And is it really that easy to change the 
100mw card onto the 200mw FCC version ?
It is claimed here: 
http://seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/SenaoCard#head-4421ff6bd02a1b24c8c8ef132f80e6cc864954bb
Does the hostap-driver check the Regulator Domain List and will only allow 
the maximum txpower for the matching domain ?

Please let me know what the real truth about the different versions is. I 
guess Senao made a the change for the different txpower versions in the 
hardware. Or am I wrong ?

My card has the following FCC ID: NI3-2511CD-PLUS3
But the sticker with the S/N and the MAC has the fhe following on it 
NL-2511CD PLUS EXT2 (E100).
The E100 in the brakets says that it is a 100mw version !? I can use the 
channels 1-13 thus.
The FCC 200mw version has a F200 in brakets. Pictures at: 
http://www.maokhian.com/reviews/senao.html proof that.

I have included a dump of hostap_diag -a (from the recent 
hostap-utils-0.2.0) from my card.

Looking forward reading your ideas about this txpower issue.

Best Regards - Michael Troci

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Achilleas Kotsis wrote:

>Tested on Prism2 PCMCIA Card, firmware 1.7.1, works like a charm.
>Thank you very much, we live in Greece and have many Prism FCC cards with 
>11
>channels, Greece follows ETSI regulations (13 channels).
>If you have any suggestions in patching Windows drivers or flash firmware,
>they would be most welcome.

You should change two word in the PDA - regulatory domain and allowed
channels.  HostAP doesn't allow dumping PDA yet, so you can get
linux-wlan-ng (http://www.linux-wlan.com/) and use prism2dl
(http://www.red-bean.com/~proski/prism2dl/) to dump PDA using the "-g"
option.

The find the like that has 0x0103 in the second position and change the
number in the fourth position (which is normally 0x0010 - FCC) to 0x0030 -
ETSI.  The line that has 0x0104 in the second position should have 0x1fff
in the third position - it means that channels 1-13 are allowed.
:$ diff before after
7,8c7,8
< 0x0007, 0x0103, 0x0001, 0x0010, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0x0000,
< 0x0002, 0x0104, 0x07ff,
---
>0x0007, 0x0103, 0x0001, 0x0030, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0x0000,
>0x0002, 0x0104, 0x1fff,

Flash the PDA using prism2dl.  You may also need to flash secondary
firmware unless you are going to always use downloadable firmware.

I don't know about Windows, but this page may be helpful:
http://www.frars.org.uk/cgi-bin/render.pl?pageid=1109

Still, it's better to preserve your PDA and just patch it than to
overwrite it completely.  If you can dump your PDA, try finding those
numbers and changing them.

--
Regards,
Pavel Roskin
>From jsun at junsun.net  Wed Jul 16 17:12:14 2003
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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