One more lspci invisible Broadcom card, HP Compaq 6515b

One more lspci invisible Broadcom card, HP Compaq 6515b

[Rafał Miłecki]

I'm lucky to meet people with invisible cards.

unitedriders has HP Compaq 6515b which physically has BCM4311 card.
The problem is lspci does not show his card:
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (Internal gfx)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7914
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI
Express Port 1)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI
Express Port 2)
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8
[Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8
[Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8
[Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8
[Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS690M [Radeon
X1200 Series]
02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b6)
02:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 02)
10:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M
Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

There is Broadcom lan card, so for a moment I though it make be SSB
bus with two cores: lan and 80211. But this 14e4:1693 card is
supported by tg3 driver, which is not SSB driver. It seems to be
standard PCI card, so nothing else can hide behind it.

Of course this is HP notebook with WiFi blacklist in BIOS, so putting
another card is not a option.
I asked unitedriders for putting his BCM4311 in another machine. He
has access to some Sony VAIO, but card slot is different (I guess HP
has mini PCI, Sony has mini PCIe).

AFAIR last time I reported such a issue noone got any idea what could
be wrong. But it does not hurt to bring this question once again.

Do you have any ideas other than faulty port or card? Unfortunately
there is not other OS on this machine to test card detection with.

unitedriders mentioned his HP has so called "touch sensive" wlan
switch, but it's unlikely it totally disables PCI port.

-- 
Rafa?

One more lspci invisible Broadcom card, HP Compaq 6515b

[Larry Finger]

On 04/20/2011 05:42 PM, Rafa? Mi?ecki wrote:
>
> Of course this is HP notebook with WiFi blacklist in BIOS, so putting
> another card is not a option.

The HP BIOS allows a small set of PCI IDs. Usually, some Intel cards will be 
allowed as well as some Broadcom units.

> I asked unitedriders for putting his BCM4311 in another machine. He
> has access to some Sony VAIO, but card slot is different (I guess HP
> has mini PCI, Sony has mini PCIe).
>
> AFAIR last time I reported such a issue noone got any idea what could
> be wrong. But it does not hurt to bring this question once again.
>
> Do you have any ideas other than faulty port or card? Unfortunately
> there is not other OS on this machine to test card detection with.
>
> unitedriders mentioned his HP has so called "touch sensive" wlan
> switch, but it's unlikely it totally disables PCI port.

Does the BIOS allow the wifi device to be disabled?

If unitedriders has access to any other wifi card that will fit in the slot, 
then the BIOS can be used to test the slot. If the other card is recognized, 
then the BIOS error message will appear. That will definitely say that the 
problem is not the bridge or the PCI adapter. I guess this machine has mini-PCI, 
not mini-PCIe.

The only other possibility is that all the hardware is good, but the kernel 
cannot drive the bridge to which the BCM4311 is attached. Does the dmesg output 
have any indication of this?

Larry

One more lspci invisible Broadcom card, HP Compaq 6515b

[Peter Stuge]

Rafa? Mi?ecki wrote:
> unitedriders has HP Compaq 6515b which physically has BCM4311 card.
> The problem is lspci does not show his card:
> 00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge
..
> 00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
..

> Of course this is HP notebook with WiFi blacklist in BIOS, so
> putting another card is not a option.

The whitelist could always be modified.


> I asked unitedriders for putting his BCM4311 in another machine. He
> has access to some Sony VAIO, but card slot is different (I guess
> HP has mini PCI, Sony has mini PCIe).

It's completely possible that the HP has miniPCI, which would then be
behind the SB600. But it's a little stupid not to have miniPCIe when
the RS690 does support it.


> Do you have any ideas other than faulty port or card?

Sure, BIOS can fail at setting up decoding and bridges or the kernel
can fail at following the setup.

The BIOS can of course also do this selectively and/or on purpose,
e.g. I could expect that if a wlan card is not in the whitelist.


> unitedriders mentioned his HP has so called "touch sensive" wlan
> switch, but it's unlikely it totally disables PCI port.

Agree.


This platform (RS690+SB600) is supported by coreboot. It would make a
nice exercise for anyone interested in firmware development to create
a coreboot port for his machine. (It's still a bit of work though.)


//Peter