Intel WiFi 3945ABG works with psp

Kai Beginner Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 4

Greetings,

*edit* looks like I finally got it working without flaw. I might eventually write a tutorial on what things need to be done to get it running, if the demand is high enough. Until then, I have posted the things i've used/done to get it running. For basic stuff like installing packages and configuring other parts of linux, please refer to other tutorials.

the dreaded card, which everyone thinks is not working actually does work.

What i've managed so far is to connect to players, and see them move around in the Gathering Hall of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. I havent had the chance to actually launch a mission with any yet.

And thats because here is the problem: connecting to players only happens in the rarest cases, within 4 hours of testing now, i was able to see 2 players in one game.
I hopped out of that game, joined a few others and there was silence on the wifi device's TX. Only RX from my PSP.
I returned to the first game and suddenly it worked again. RX and TX traffic on the wifi card.
Later i was able to see one player in the lobby, which i followed into a hosted game, there i could see him again. Afterwards i went back to see one of the first two players and i could no longer connect to him.

I have extensively watched network traffic and i found the spot where it fails.
I'll try to explain in a little connectivity diagram:

Outgoing Traffic:
[MyPSP] => [wifi -> xlink -> eth0] => [internet gateway/NAT router] => ... => [RemotePSP]

Incoming Traffic:
[RemotePSP] => ... => [gateway] => [eth0 -> xlink -> wifi] => [MyPSP]

The Problem lies somewhere in the red colored area as i can actually see RemotePSP packets incoming on eth0, but they are not going out on the wlan0 device.
The only way to produce wlan0 TX traffic is by sending out a ping to a nonexistant machine. So TX is not disabled, so that cant be the problem.

And finally my question to the developers: What makes xlink decide whether to forward the received data, or not to forward it?
Of course there are a few other factors like the wifi drivers that might cause the fail of routing. But there's not much I can do on the drivers.

A little background on what was required to get the card running

Kernel 2.6.31-gentoo-r4 (default .31 should do as well but NOT pre-compiled)
aircrack-ng 1.0 (used to get the PSPs ESSID and create the monitor device using airmon-ng start wlan0)
compat-wireless package which replaces the wifi drivers with experimental ones that are able to inject packages
disabled wpa_supplicant and instead used iwconfig for the init.d/net.wlan0 script (configured in /etc/conf.d/net)

I also use these steps to get my card into a useable state. Some things might not be required, but I'll have to experiment more on that.

Code:

#to find the PSP ESSID:
airmon-ng start wlan0
airodump-ng -c 1 mon0

#to reboot the wifi driver (init.d only needed when autoloading on modprobe is disabled for net.wlan0 in /etc/conf.d/rc)
/etc/init.d/net.wlan0 stop
rmmod iwl3945
modprobe iwl3945
/etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start

#putting the card into the psp mode (please note that the wifi i was referring to is actually the device called mon0 created as a copy from wlan0)
airmon-ng start wlan0
ifconfig wlan0 down
ifconfig mon0 down
iwconfig mon0 channel 1
iwconfig mon0 mode ad-hoc
iwconfig mon0 essid PSP_XXXXXXXXX_L_XXXXXX
ifconfig mon0 up

By the way, many thanks to ghostyloco who has patiently watched while I succeded and failed to connect to him dozens of times within the last hours.

Kai Beginner Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 4

Something new i found out while trying 7.0 with java frontend instead of 7.4... On the player overview in xlink it keeps saying "establishing link" under my name.

I have yet to find out if thats the reason for my problems.

*edit* might be some gateway problem... i'll try out a direct connection...

*edit2* this "establishing link" thing... seems like my router was causing it, there's something awfully wrong with. Direct connection to the net works nicely so far.

So what I can say here... the Intel Wireless Pro 3945ABG works just fine with xlink under linux.

PSP Guru Joined: 07 Apr 2007 Posts: 2405

skythe83 wrote:

Something new i found out while trying 7.0 with java frontend instead of 7.4... On the player overview in xlink it keeps saying "establishing link" under my name.

I have yet to find out if thats the reason for my problems.

*edit* might be some gateway problem... i'll try out a direct connection...

*edit2* this "establishing link" thing... seems like my router was causing it, there's something awfully wrong with. Direct connection to the net works nicely so far.

So what I can say here... the Intel Wireless Pro 3945ABG works just fine with xlink under linux.

Mine has said establishing connection for years, it's not an issue, for i still can play.