I've been experiencing some frustrating problems with my Lucent
Orinoco 802.11b (Classic Gold) wireless card (dmesg below).  I'm
running on a NetBSD 2.0 kernel, and use dhclient to get leases.

The main symptom is that all wireless traffic goes dead.  The
console shows messages like:

    wi0: device timeout
    wi0: command timed out, cmd=0x2, arg=0x0

Thinking originally there was a minor hiccup with the DHCP leases, I
would invoke dhclient, but would see messages like:

    send_packet: No buffer space available

The only solution I've found is to ifconfig the card down and then
up again.  Traffic usually resumes with no problem; if I catch it
early enough, I don't need to release/reget my DHCP lease.

I've been experiencing this problem for several months, but it was
usually very sporadic, only occuring once a week or so.  But in
the last week it has started happening almost every 5-10 minutes.
I've upgraded the card's firmware, but to no effect.

I use this card almost exclusively on our university wireless network.

I'm wondering if this is related to my hard drive reporting lost interrupts:

    piixide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	    type: ata tc_bcount: 0 tc_skip: 0
    piixide0:0:0: lost interrupt
	    type: ata tc_bcount: 8192 tc_skip: 0
    piixide0:0:0: intr with DRQ (st=0x58)
    wd0: transfer error, downgrading to Ultra-DMA mode 1
    wd0(piixide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 1 (using DMA data transfers)
    wd0e: device timeout reading fsbn 2355312 of 2355312-2355327 (wd0 bn 14636910; cn 14520 tn 11 sn 57), retrying
    wd0: soft error (corrected)

I've been getting these more frequently as well (I do frequent
backups :-)

dmesg:

    wi0 at pcmcia0 function 0: Lucent Technologies, WaveLAN/IEEE, Version 01.01
    wi0: 802.11 address 00:02:2d:52:28:4d
    wi0: using Lucent Technologies, WaveLAN/IEEE
    wi0: Lucent Firmware: Station (8.72.1)
    wi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

I'm grateful for any advice (or requests for further information).

Applicable id strings:

     $NetBSD: if_wi_pcmcia.c,v 1.41 2004/01/25 02:42:49 sekiya Exp $
     $NetBSD: cardslot.c,v 1.24 2003/11/02 09:56:38 wiz Exp $
     $NetBSD: wi.c,v 1.159.2.2 2004/07/23 23:26:50 he Exp $

Brian.

-- 
     Brian de Alwis | Graduate student | Software Practices Lab | UBC
"There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell