Installing WiFiStation Ext on BTHH5A

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

I have an old WiFiStation Ext USB adapter lying around, and I wanted to make some use of it and maybe placing it outside for outdoor coverage.

I connected it to my BTHH5A running 19.07.0, installed core USB functionality, both USB 1.1 and 2.0 (it's supposed to be USB 2.0, but I suspected from the log that it might be USB 1.1 so I added that too. I also installed the driver for that adapter kmod-ath9k-htc.

Still no luck. As per the log:

[   15.648104] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: Firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw requested
[   15.654329] usbcore: registered new interface driver ath9k_htc
[   15.684175] PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:0e.0 (0000 -> 0002)
[   15.695698] ath: phy1: Ignoring endianness difference in EEPROM magic bytes.
[   15.703218] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x833a
[   15.703232] ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a country code
[   15.703253] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
[   15.703267] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x37
[   15.703279] ath: Country alpha2 being used: GB
[   15.703288] ath: Regpair used: 0x37
[   15.725258] ieee80211 phy1: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
[   15.729023] ieee80211 phy1: Atheros AR9287 Rev:2 mem=0xb8000000, irq=30
[   15.738296] kmodloader: done loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
[   16.519648] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: Transferred FW: ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw, size: 51008
[   16.773356] ath9k_htc 1-1:1.0: ath9k_htc: HTC initialized with 33 credits
[   17.180162] ath: phy2: Failed to read SREV register
[   17.180188] ath: phy2: Could not read hardware revisions
[   17.183626] ath: phy2: Unable to initialize hardware; initialization status: -122
[   17.196513] ath: phy2: Unable to initialize hardware; initialization status: -122
[   17.204074] ath9k_htc: Failed to initialize the device
[   17.249657] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: USB layer deinitialized

How can I solve that? and do I need to do anything else afterwards to get it to work?

Edit: There is also the following, if it's any relevant:

[    1.654484] USB_VBUS: disabling
[    1.664834] VFS: Mounted root (squashfs filesystem) readonly on device 254:0.
[    1.674580] Freeing unused kernel memory: 1272K
[    1.677718] This architecture does not have kernel memory protection.
[    2.306808] init: Console is alive
[    2.309206] init: - watchdog -
[    3.661700] kmodloader: loading kernel modules from /etc/modules-boot.d/*
[    3.781613] dwc2 1e101000.usb: 1e101000.usb supply vusb_d not found, using dummy regulator
[    3.788685] dwc2 1e101000.usb: 1e101000.usb supply vusb_a not found, using dummy regulator
[    3.797216] dwc2 1e101000.usb: dwc2_core_reset() HANG! AHB Idle GRSTCTL=0
[    4.004479] dwc2 1e101000.usb: DWC OTG Controller
[    4.007815] dwc2 1e101000.usb: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    4.014909] dwc2 1e101000.usb: irq 62, io mem 0x1e101000
[    4.021726] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    4.024271] hub 1-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[    4.030255] kmodloader: done loading kernel modules from /etc/modules-boot.d/*
[    4.046698] init: - preinit -
[    4.312363] lantiq,xrx200-net 1e108000.eth eth0: port 1 got link
[    4.612135] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using dwc2

Thanks.

2

Any hints, please? Thanks.

3

does it work fine on PC? some other router? that same router with 15.05 or older?

1 Like
4

It works on my PC, but it's a Windows PC. I never tried it on a router before.

5

try live linux

1 Like
6

I ran Ubuntu 19.10 live; the device worked out of the box! I'm using it right now.

and

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsusb
...
...
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0cf3:b003 Qualcomm Atheros Communications Ubiquiti WiFiStationEXT 802.11n [Atheros AR9271]
7

I found also what appears to be a very similar problem, on a different hardware and different OpenWrt version.

Noticing that, I connected the USB adapter to my Archer C7 V2 running also 19.07.0 and it seems to work (after installing the driver of course. So it seems the issue might be related to Lantiq xrx200.

From Archer C7 V2 log:

[   16.130852] usb 2-1: ath9k_htc: Firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw requested
[   16.138365] usbcore: registered new interface driver ath9k_htc
[   16.242982] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x0
[   16.242990] ath: EEPROM indicates default country code should be used
[   16.242993] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
[   16.243006] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x3a
[   16.243011] ath: Country alpha2 being used: US
[   16.243014] ath: Regpair used: 0x3a
[   16.260906] ieee80211 phy1: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
[   16.262349] ieee80211 phy1: Atheros AR9550 Rev:0 mem=0xb8100000, irq=13
[   16.304133] kmodloader: done loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
[   16.711259] usb 2-1: ath9k_htc: Transferred FW: ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw, size: 51008
[   16.974030] ath9k_htc 2-1:1.0: ath9k_htc: HTC initialized with 33 credits
[   17.449875] ath9k_htc 2-1:1.0: ath9k_htc: FW Version: 1.4
[   17.455486] ath9k_htc 2-1:1.0: FW RMW support: On
[   17.460263] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x0
[   17.464065] ath: EEPROM indicates default country code should be used
[   17.470610] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
[   17.476016] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x3a
[   17.480874] ath: Country alpha2 being used: US
[   17.485393] ath: Regpair used: 0x3a
[   17.620525] ieee80211 phy2: Atheros AR9271 Rev:1

Comparing the log with the log from BTHH5A, it seems that things go wrong for BTHH5A at:

[   17.180162] ath: phy2: Failed to read SREV register
[   17.180188] ath: phy2: Could not read hardware revisions
[   17.183626] ath: phy2: Unable to initialize hardware; initialization status: -122