Author Topic: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)  (Read 10814 times)

warpsalad

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Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« on: May 29, 2018, 08:01:47 pm »
So I finally got my T41 upgraded and thrown back together. The Intel 2915ABG wifi card is installed, and the BIOS has been modded to disable the whitelisting. IBM states in their documentation that the 2915ABG is not supported on the T41, only the T42 and beyond (however I presume that's due to the said whitelisting). The BIOS did complain that an unsupported Wifi module was detected prior to modding the BIOS.

Whenever I boot into OS/2 (ArcaOS) I only see the wired Intel NIC, when I disabled the wired Intel NIC OS/2 then complains because it's no longer present and the way it configures things is very stepped like that.

So... my question is...
Should I reinstall ArcaOS if it needs to see network devices during the installation process to set up? And if I do, how exactly does one get GenMAC going?

I'm presuming that the T41 is in fact compatible with the 2915ABG.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2018, 04:28:12 am »
ArcaOS seems to default to only installing one network driver. Here on my T42 it would default to the wired nic. Luckily I previously had eCS installed, which correctly setup both wired and wireless, so knew which driver to install.
You should be able to use MPTN (Adapters and Protocols) to install the GENMAC driver, something like GenMac Wrapper Intel 2915 a/b/g [8086:4224]. There's a few similar ones, you might have to use PCI to get the exact card ID. Then of course you need the WPA Supplicant or the Xcenter plugin to turn the radio on and such.

Roderick Klein

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2018, 04:32:52 pm »
So I finally got my T41 upgraded and thrown back together. The Intel 2915ABG wifi card is installed, and the BIOS has been modded to disable the whitelisting. IBM states in their documentation that the 2915ABG is not supported on the T41, only the T42 and beyond (however I presume that's due to the said whitelisting). The BIOS did complain that an unsupported Wifi module was detected prior to modding the BIOS.

Whenever I boot into OS/2 (ArcaOS) I only see the wired Intel NIC, when I disabled the wired Intel NIC OS/2 then complains because it's no longer present and the way it configures things is very stepped like that.

So... my question is...
Should I reinstall ArcaOS if it needs to see network devices during the installation process to set up? And if I do, how exactly does one get GenMAC going?

I'm presuming that the T41 is in fact compatible with the 2915ABG.


I think it should be able to install the Wifi driver next to the wired NIC (and auto detect it). If not open a ticket at https://mantis.arcanoae.com (you can login with your userid and password).
Also what version of ArcaOS have you got 5.02, 5.01 or 5.00 ?
(You can tell by checking your ArcaOS  DVD the file \SYS\arcanoae.flg)

When you open a ticket follow the following instructions:
https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/reporting-problems-best-practices/
Possibly the database does not have the entry to detect the NIC.

Best regards,

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE

Doug Bissett

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2018, 08:01:30 pm »
Quote
So... my question is...
Should I reinstall ArcaOS if it needs to see network devices during the installation process to set up? And if I do, how exactly does one get GenMAC going?

I'm presuming that the T41 is in fact compatible with the 2915ABG.

I have a Broadcom wired NIC, and an Intel 2915ABG (known to GENMAC as an 8086:4224) in my IBM ThinkPad T43, Installing ArcaOS (I have done both 5.0 and 5.0.2) finds, and properly installs, both drivers (multimac MMBGE for wired, and GENMAC for WiFi). GENMAC will NOT use WPA2 for WiFi, but WPA works fine. The same windows driver, in XP, will use WPA2, so that problem is something in the GENMAC base (and that is not likely to get fixed).

If the WiFi is not recognized at install time, simply install without it, then install GENMAC later. It should find the device, or, if not, it will install the base GENMAC support, so you can try other things. Be aware, that GENMAC is ancient, and very limited in what it can do, so some experimenting may be required to get it working. It is also very important to get the lines in CONFIG.SYS in the correct order. I suggest getting LCSS from HOBES, and use that to sort your CONFIG.SYS. GENMAC will warn about CONFIG.SYS sorters, LCSS does it [properly.

warpsalad

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2018, 12:43:46 am »
I have a Broadcom wired NIC, and an Intel 2915ABG (known to GENMAC as an 8086:4224) in my IBM ThinkPad T43, Installing ArcaOS (I have done both 5.0 and 5.0.2) finds, and properly installs, both drivers (multimac MMBGE for wired, and GENMAC for WiFi). GENMAC will NOT use WPA2 for WiFi, but WPA works fine. The same windows driver, in XP, will use WPA2, so that problem is something in the GENMAC base (and that is not likely to get fixed).
Oh that sucks... I was intending to use the laptop at work on the company wifi so, I'd definitely need WPA2. Not a problem! I'll just do the raspberry pi option for work, but in the meantime I'll try everyone's suggestions on getting wifi functional with WPA1 for non-work purposes.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2018, 02:40:56 am »
WPA2 seems to work fine on my T42, using  Intel 2915ABG (known to GENMAC as an 8086:4220). The xcenter widget says I'm using WPA2-PSK.
All I did was create a profile which I named home and fill out the the regular stuff and under the Security tab picked out the "Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2-PSK" and entered the preshared key and it just worked.
I did have to manually pick out my NIC driver and still don't have the wired nic working as I haven't had need for it.
According to PCI.exe it's a
Device 4220h PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection and seems to work as fast as my LTE Internet connection allows or close enough.

Edit, My Internet hub says it is using WPA2(AES)-PSK which was the default.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2018, 05:49:18 am by Dave Yeo »

warpsalad

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #6 on: June 01, 2018, 03:09:06 pm »
WPA2 seems to work fine on my T42, using  Intel 2915ABG (known to GENMAC as an 8086:4220). The xcenter widget says I'm using WPA2-PSK.
All I did was create a profile which I named home and fill out the the regular stuff and under the Security tab picked out the "Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2-PSK" and entered the preshared key and it just worked.
I did have to manually pick out my NIC driver and still don't have the wired nic working as I haven't had need for it.
According to PCI.exe it's a
Device 4220h PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection and seems to work as fast as my LTE Internet connection allows or close enough.

Edit, My Internet hub says it is using WPA2(AES)-PSK which was the default.
*Gasp* well that's a relief! I'll just disable physical ethernet in the BIOS so that there's only one NIC connection (The wireless adapter). I'm thinking I'll just reinstall OS/2 on a different hard disk to test things out.

Although now WPA3 was just announced so... I suspect WPA2 stuff will (eventually) be retired.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #7 on: June 01, 2018, 06:53:48 pm »
Quote
WPA2 seems to work fine on my T42, using  Intel 2915ABG (known to GENMAC as an 8086:4220).

It is probably one of the "edge" conditions that GENMAC runs into, sometimes. It may depend, exactly, how everything fits into the memory space that GENMAC uses. It is known, that some windows drivers will overwrite part of the GENMAC configuration area. Depending, exactly, what gets overwritten, something may, or may not, work. The only way to find out, for sure, is to try it.

Quote
*Gasp* well that's a relief! I'll just disable physical ethernet in the BIOS so that there's only one NIC connection (The wireless adapter).

Disabling the ethernet may, or may not, help (probably not, if you have the problem). Sometimes, changing some settings for the windows driver will reduce the memory footprint, but that can cause, as well as work around, problems. Personally, I don't care if WPA2 works, or not, so I haven't tried to fix the problem.

If you have the problem, and can't get it to work, one option is to use a device that does WiFi, when connected to the wired NIC. I use a D-LINK DIR-506L, which works pretty well, and it is useful for other things. It is also faster than a 2915ABG, but it is a few years old now, so you may need to find a newer device that does what it does. There are a number of them available, at pretty reasonable cost.

Andi B.

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #8 on: June 01, 2018, 07:29:51 pm »
I still do not see which card you have exactly. Here's the list of cards I've tested https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1202.msg12286.html#msg12286

IIRC the R52/Intel 2915  8086:4224 does have problems with WPA2 (not WPA).

Another note - I recently discovered that the Atheros     168C:1014 in my T60 does not work out of the box with ArcaOS. I reinstalled the older Genmac2.0 instead 2.2 which is shipped with AcraOS and now it works.
« Last Edit: June 01, 2018, 08:41:49 pm by Andi B. »

Doug Bissett

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #9 on: June 01, 2018, 08:08:13 pm »
Quote
Another note - I recently discovered that the Atheros     168C:1014 in my T60 does not work out of the box with ArcaOS. I reinstalled the older Genmac2.0 instead 2.2 which is shipped with AcraOS and now it works.

From what I do know, the GENMAC 2.0, and 2.2 base code is identical. The only difference is the supported devices that are included. Some were left out of 2.2 because of licensing concerns, and a few others were updated. I don't know, for sure, what ArcaOS did, but I suspect that no changes were made. Most of it should be replaced by Multimac, when they get it done. Currently, I think that all wired NICs, that were in GENMAC, have Multimac (or other) support. GENMAC is only needed for WiFi, and that support is very limited. I haven't seen any indication of which WiFi devices will be supported by Multimac, so it is possible that some older ones might still need to use GENMAC.

Some options exist at ftp://genmac@ftp.os2voice.org/ (use the word "unsupported", no quotes, and lower case, if it asks for a password), along with some explanation of what is done to add unsupported devices. READ the instructions carefully, if you try changing what is there.

Andi B.

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #10 on: June 01, 2018, 08:57:05 pm »
Sorry I mixed some things up. The problem was with my T42p and Intel 2200 [8086:4220]. WRND32$ V2.01 works but the newer one supplied with ArcaOS (being more precise it was a BlueLion test release) does not.

Code: [Select]
works        ---> 23.10.07   8.21         215.551      0   ___A_  genm32w.os2
does not work --> 11.02.08  20.00         215.768      0   ___A_  genm32w.os2.ori

Dave Yeo

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Re: Intel 2915ABG on a T41 with OS/2 (questions)
« Reply #11 on: June 02, 2018, 01:34:48 am »
Sorry I mixed some things up. The problem was with my T42p and Intel 2200 [8086:4220]. WRND32$ V2.01 works but the newer one supplied with ArcaOS (being more precise it was a BlueLion test release) does not.

Code: [Select]
works        ---> 23.10.07   8.21         215.551      0   ___A_  genm32w.os2
does not work --> 11.02.08  20.00         215.768      0   ___A_  genm32w.os2.ori

This is a BlueLion test release IIRC. All the test releases that I tested on the T42 worked with WiFi but I didn't test WPA2 until late last year when I moved from dial-up to a LTE connection. The LTE hub only has one ethernet port which I claimed for my desktop and while I didn't mind not having my dial-up connection unsecured (using NAT from OS/2 to a router for WiFi sharing), I do mind with the LTE connection as it has a quota of 250 Gbs and then Telus charges a fortune for overages.
My location is pretty secure but the school bus route ends outside and the kids would leech the bandwidth.