Bug 6987

Summary:	mPCI-E only seems to only recognize wifi cards
Product:	[Hardware Platforms] MinnowBoard MAX	Reporter:	John 'Warthog9' Hawley <warthog9>
Component:	hw-minnowmax	Assignee:	David Anders <danders>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:
Severity:	major
Priority:	Medium	CC:	danders, david.wei, mike.wu, sjolley.yp.pm, tim.he
Version:	2C A1
Target Milestone:	Production Release
Hardware:	MinnowBoard Max
OS:	x86_64
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto:	---	Type of Regression:	---
Verified:		Documentation change:	Don't know

Description John 'Warthog9' Hawley 2014-11-21 02:01:59 UTC

I've been testing various mPCI-E cards available after some reports of cards not working.  After doing some testing (with the cards that have arrived so far) I've noticed an odd trend.

Test setup:

MinnowBoard MAX A1 Dual Core 2G of ram
Seacat lure (pre-production)
5v 8A power supply
MNW2MAX1.X64.0073.R02.1409160934

Cards that work, and are seen correctly by Linux (Fedora 20):

Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 (Wireless) (62205ANHMW)
Intel Dual Band Wireless 7260 (Wireless) (7260HMW)
Intel Centrino Wireless-N 135 (Wireless) (135BNHMW)
Atheros AR5BHB92-H (Wireless)

Cards that *DO NOT* work, and are invisible under Linux (Fedora 20):

StarTech.com ST1000SMPEX (Gigabit Ethernet)
Syba SD-MPE24031 (Gigabit Ethernet)
DeLock 6gb/s SATA (SATA controller)
Syba 2-port 6gb/s SATA (SATA controller) (SD-MPE40056)

---

It looks like any wireless card I've thrown at the system comes up fine, anything that isn't a wireless card, has not.  I've also tested the SD-MPE24031 on an Intel NUC DE3815TYKHE (barebones) using the SAME usb stick to boot from, it also does not see the device from Linux.

This feels like some sort of firmware whitelist for devices, a quick glance at the 0.73 source doesn't immediately reveal anything obvious though.

1) is this some sort of pci whitelist that only allows wireless (and potentially wan) card to work
2) is there some sort of detection pin that would identify the card that would cause it to not be properly detected?

Comment 1 David Anders 2014-12-12 00:24:55 UTC

issue has been tracked down to improper AC Capacitor in series for the TX differential pair on the Seacat Lure. after reworking done to the seacat to add the capacitors, the UEFI firmware was able to identify and enumerate a wide range of mPCIe cards include pcie->sata pcie->ethernet and pcie->rs232