Thursday, August 6, 2009

Some thoughts of the day with Don King's Prizefighter

I went back to playing Don King's Prizefighter on the DS. At this point, I have totally beaten the game and have moved on so to add a little spice, I decided to played an exhibition match on hard mode using Archibald Moore vs Rocky Marciano on the classic 30s ring. I wanted to put everything as authentic as the game could to present the classic Marciano vs Moore battle and put myself on a real stiff challenge. Marciano on Easy and Medium is a cakewalk but on hard, he is deadly lethal. I really had to fight my heart out to a 12-round unanimous decision. I did not realize I had set the game on twelve rounds so I was really wondering while slugging out with Rocky how long the fight was and boy it was a thrill to get the final round and beat him.

At the opening bell, Rocky hurt me with some real lethal combos and I was in real trouble. I had not put my fighting cap on and that was a real wake up call for me to keep my defenses up. To literally walk into his combinations is not the smartest thing to do so I paced myself and worked on more defense and unloading shots and jabs when it was really open. I could tell at round one I was barely hurting him but I kept on the peppering jabs, focusing on the body mostly. I was able to rest a bit and keep most of lethal powershots at bay. That was survival mode and I survived round one without kissing the canvas.

As it turns out, the judges called the round even. I was surprised when my cornerman called it an even round. We had to work on slowing Rocky down and keep on hitting him when he was open. The plan was to wear him down and have the damage accumulate, focusing on the body combinations more than the head. It was foolish to try and go for the head when there was still a lot of power in his shots. For rounds two to six, this was the approach and I did not deviate from the game plan.

By round seven, I got my first knockdown and I noticed his power punches were getting slower. That was the first real sign for me that Rocky was getting hurt (also the first time I realized the game emulated this). I needed to start pouring in and opening up with the combinations because going in on the defense will allow Rocky to recover. Rocky did get a few hooks and uppercuts in but they did not do as much damage as they did before. I started to balance out my assault on both the body and the head while still maintaining a good defense. Rocky is darn dangerous at any point in the fight if you let him have his day, so do not forget about defense!

I started to get more power combinations in and hurt Rocky more and more. Still, I did not forget to apply defense. Rocky was getting a bit discouraged and frequently bobbed, and weaved instead of throwing his attacks. For rounds nine, ten, and eleven, I had Rocky backed on the ropes for a good half round, hurting him and giving him the time of his life. I finished round eleven with two knockdowns knowing full and well that I had control of the fight and I was way ahead on the scorecards. With round twelve I knew I had it and I sealed the deal with another knockdown.

The score card read Moore - Marciano, 360-302. I racked up a total of six knockdowns. The first few rounds were a bit of a knife's edge as Marciano had some powerful shots. As the fight wore on, it got a bit easier. I have no doubt that on another day, Marciano would probably knock me out. Today though, was my day.

Monday, July 6, 2009

No good.

This wireless problem seems to really be tenacious. I did a spot check a few minutes ago and yeah, the wireless was not working at all. This is very annoying that I have to keep reloading the driver, but well, I guess this is the only thing I can do. So much for Linux for Humans.

I don't want to update my kernel as that would might break my nvidia driver, so at the end of the day, I am stuck with this piece of crap driver.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Intel Wireless Update

Today, I checked dmesg and this is the output I got:
[432892.672000] iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver for Linux, 1.1.0
[432892.672000] iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
[432892.676000] iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
[432892.968000] iwl4965: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 19 802.11a channels
[432892.968000] wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-4965-rs'
[432893.592000] iwl4965: Error sending REPLY_SCAN_CMD: time out after 500ms.
[432893.592000] iwl4965: TX Power requested while scanning!
[432944.556000] iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver for Linux, 1.1.0
[432944.556000] iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
[432944.556000] iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
[432944.816000] iwl4965: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 19 802.11a channels
[432944.816000] wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-4965-rs'
[432945.396000] iwl4965: Error sending REPLY_SCAN_CMD: time out after 500ms.
[432945.396000] iwl4965: TX Power requested while scanning!
[433072.148000] iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver for Linux, 1.1.0
[433072.148000] iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
[433072.148000] iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
[433072.392000] iwl4965: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 19 802.11a channels
[433072.392000] wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-4965-rs'
[581993.352000] iwl4965: Microcode SW error detected. Restarting 0x2000000.
[581995.384000] iwl4965: Can't stop Rx DMA.

Seems like there were a few errors on the iwl4965 driver. I tried to connect to a wireless network and it still seems to work. Hopefully, this means that the problem is solved.

Friday, July 3, 2009

The IntelPro Wireless Saga Continues

If there is one thing you learn from life, is that nothing is ever straightforward. That was the case when I lent out a hand over the Ubuntu/OSX dual boot, that certainly is the case now. As fairly evident with the previous entries, Ubuntu 7.10 support for the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN has been nothing short of pitiful. This is a problem because of three main aspects.

The first is that Ubuntu opted to use the obsolete ipw3945 driver. This driver yielded very uneven results from what I gather online. My experience with this driver has been rather awful. The second is that the bundled official iwl4965 (and iwl3945) drivers are out of date. I have gotten far better results with these drivers than the obsolete ones, but the driver sputters out after a few days of operation. The third main factor is that Ubuntu chose not to fix it and instead peddle their fixes on the next release. This is not an issue of 7.10 falling out of support. This is an old issue in the Ubuntu bug tracker and one of which they were nice enough to mark as "Won't Fix".

Firstly, if the OS has old drivers, that is forgiveable if there is a fix coming, ideally providing a release with the same kernel. Second, if the folks opt not to fix this, the least they could do is provide an official workaround for poor old folks like me. If there is no official support, then that just makes the Ubuntu life that much harder to live with.

That being said, Ubuntu is still a fine distribution and one I intend to keep using. Maybe I was unfortunate to have picked hardware where Linux support is not what it is cut out to be.

Now, to push this particular problem forward, I found this comment on the Ubuntu bug tracker, one that I hope finally erases this bug forever.

Anton Khokhlov wrote on 2007-12-20

Yesterday I had found the solution. Ubuntu seems to use old Intel firmware and the issue will be resolved if you perform the following steps:
- Download the last firmware archive from http://www.intellinuxwireless.org/?p=iwlwifi&n=Downloads . The file's name is iwlwifi-
4965-ucode-version number.tgz
- Unpack the archive tar xvf iwlwifi-
4965-ucode-what version you got.tgz
- Copy iwlwifi-4965.ucode from the unpacked folder into /lib/firmware/your kernel version/
iwlwifi-4965.ucode and /lib/firmware/your kernel version/iwlwifi-4965-1.ucode (you should overwrite two files with the same data)

After that you need to reboot or just to say
rmmod iwl4965
modprobe iwl4965
Now on my computer it have been working for the 24 hours continuously without any disconnect. But I can not guarantee it works everywhere.

Of course, when I followed his instructions to the letter, I broke my wireless support. This is the warm and glowing message dmesg greeted me with.

[432944.556000] iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver for Linux, 1.1.0
[432944.556000] iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
[432944.556000] iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
[432944.816000] iwl4965: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 19 802.11a channels
[432944.816000] wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-4965-rs'
[432945.396000] iwl4965: Error sending REPLY_SCAN_CMD: time out after 500ms.
[432945.396000] iwl4965: TX Power requested while scanning!

You vermin! I am utterly irrate by the constant headaches this driver problem has given me. All is not lost however. It is a good thing I normally keep a backup of all things before fiddling them. So by checking the dates, and making sure to use the iwl4965 firmware in the context of the comment, I gave the iwlwifi-4965-ucode-4.44.1.20.tgz (posted November 27, 2009) firmware a try. We will see how this one goes. So far it looks like the driver is working after the good old modprobe -r/modprobe reloading trick. We will see how this one fairs.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Damn it!

After a few days of smooth sailing, I noticed that the iwl4965 driver crapped out. This is not nice. Seems like nothing is ever easy with this problem. I am going to try and update the iwl4965 drivers and see how that goes...

For reference, this is the problem I saw (dmesg | grep iwl):
[ 24.104000] iwl4965: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN driver for Linux, 1.1.0
[ 24.104000] iwl4965: Copyright(c) 2003-2007 Intel Corporation
[ 24.104000] iwl4965: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
[ 24.440000] iwl4965: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 19 802.11a channels
[ 24.440000] wmaster0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-4965-rs'
[135851.700000] iwl4965: Microcode SW error detected. Restarting 0x2000000.
[135909.124000] iwl4965: REPLY_ADD_STA failed

I fixed this by reloading the drivers again.
$ sudo modprobe -r iwl4965
$ sudo modprobe iwl4965

Not funny. Not funny at all.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Update on my Ubuntu Intel Pro Wireless Woes

So, this is a few days since the switch to that bad news ipw3945 driver to the "new" iwl4965 driver on my Acer laptop and I am ecstatic to write this post to say that the iwl4965 driver works like a charm. Ubuntu has been running for a while now and I can switch to my wireless at any time. It has also been wonderful to see that the list of wireless spots detected by my network manager constantly get updated. I am very much relieved to see this finally get squared away.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Ubuntu and my Intel Pro Wireless LAN Card

Okay, I have been wondering why my wireless network card refuses to function after a few days and I cannot fix it by rebooting. I've always had to reboot to Vista to sort of give the hardware a little kick. Maybe there is some residue in the hardware buffer of the wireless card, but for whatever reason, it has been testing my patience.

I also happen to remember when I got this laptop new, that Ubuntu did give me frequent problems with the wireless card unable to find my private access point.

This time, I really got pissed because it was again acting up when I really needed the wireless access to be working. So I decided to dig a little bit about the problem.

The laptop I bought is an Acer Aspire 5920g, and apart from the abysmal wireless performance, Ubuntu has been handling this baby pretty well. I even got the Crystal Eye camera to work.

Back to this problem. I did some reading and thankfully, there is a lot of resources from Ubuntu's very own forum. I discovered that my laptop has been running on Intel Pro 4965 AGN wireless card and that the driver Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) had been using was the obsolete ipw3945.

I knew then from past experience with this sucker that I had to discard it and find a new one. Thankfully, the kernel already comes packed with the new (Well, relatively...) iwl4965 driver from Intel.

Ubuntu has a great documentation that I followed to switch over to iwl4965 from that dubious ipw3945 driver. Click here for the online documentation. I just changed it to modprobe iwl4965 instead of iwl3945 and of course, load iwl4965 on /etc/modules.

After the reboot, it seems to be working fine, but so did the last one. I am going to observe how this one operates, and hopefully, this one works better than the last one. If all else fails, I may have to use ndiswrapper, and I do not like using Windows network drivers on Linux.

Anyway, that is all for now and I will report back if this one takes care of the issue.