[ltp] updated airo driver for MPI350 cards

[Fabrice Bellet]

Hi,

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 08:32:33AM -0700, Peter Johanson wrote:
> >   . the driver is no longer stuck with old 5.00.01/03/08 firmwares. It
> >   supports a firmware version up to 5.30.17 (please, only use ACU under 
> >   Windows to flash your firmware).
> > 
> 
> Just how horrible is it to attempt a firmware upgrade using ACU under
> linux with the current airo driver from the 2.6 kernels? Getting access
> to a laptop with a minipci slot running windows is not the easiest for
> some people. Obviously it's not recommended, but what kind of
> sucess/failure reports have you gotten?

I know the case, of someone, last year, who tried to flash the firmware
with linux-ACU + airo_mpi loaded. The ACU program failed while flashing,
and the card was toasted, dead and unrecoverable. The further attempt to
reflash it under Windows failed, because the card was no longer
recognized.

After this problem, I disabled the possibility to invoke flashcard() in
airo_mpi, but I see that this possibility still exists in airo.c.  I'll
ask the maintainer of airo.c to also disable it. Just too risky, because
this part of code is completely untested.

Theorically, it should be possible to use ACU + the linux driver
provided by cisco (mpi350.c): the flashing-related code is also
available and enabled in their driver too. We can hope that they made
some tests before shipping it, and that they support this feature. Maybe
someone on the list already tried this possibility ?

Best wishes,
-- 
fabrice