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stargo · 07-04-2003

Update on 2004-06-21:
Before you try to reproduce the steps below, please have a look at lincomatics great alchemy windows app, which simplifies this process, and makes it much more reliable and safe to use. The chance to fry your hardware should be much lower ;-)
You can find more info here: http://forums.netstumbler.com/showpo...&postcount=262

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The information if the card is silver or gold is stored in the cards PDA-Records. These are copied into the firmware when flashing.
What the apple-update-method does is flashing a firmware with fixed records, so the card is 104 bit. But since the PDA is not changed, the card will revert back to silver when being flashed on a pc or when running with the ap-firmware.
The obvious solution is to change the PDA.
WARNING: You are writing directly to the cards flash-memory. This could destroy your card, so be shure you know what youd do! I take no responsibilities for dead cards.

1. Get the files flash.exe and flash.ini from Intersil:
http://www.intersil.com/rnwscripts/c...p?p_faqid=1992
2. Boot to real dos mode
3. run
flash -5v -pd card.pda
(this dumps the pda of your card)
4. edit card.pda and change the line '6 109 XX2 1 2b 0 0' to
'6 109 3 3 2b 0 0' (replace only the two values after 109)
If you have an original orinoco card, then XX is nonexistant, else the two XX are your card-manufacturer-code.)
5. run
flash -5v -p card.pda
(this flashes the content of card.pda to your card)

Now your card has a new PDA but will still behave like a silver card. To really make it to a gold card, you simply have to flash the latest firmware to the card again (with the windows-update utility).
After removing and reinserting the card, The Client-Manager version information should show that you have a lucent gold card and that enhanced wep encryption is allowed.

07-04-2003	#9 (permalink)
stargo Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 3	Update on 2004-06-21: Before you try to reproduce the steps below, please have a look at lincomatics great alchemy windows app, which simplifies this process, and makes it much more reliable and safe to use. The chance to fry your hardware should be much lower ;-) You can find more info here: http://forums.netstumbler.com/showpo...&postcount=262 ------------------------------------------------------------------ The information if the card is silver or gold is stored in the cards PDA-Records. These are copied into the firmware when flashing. What the apple-update-method does is flashing a firmware with fixed records, so the card is 104 bit. But since the PDA is not changed, the card will revert back to silver when being flashed on a pc or when running with the ap-firmware. The obvious solution is to change the PDA. WARNING: You are writing directly to the cards flash-memory. This could destroy your card, so be shure you know what youd do! I take no responsibilities for dead cards. 1. Get the files flash.exe and flash.ini from Intersil: http://www.intersil.com/rnwscripts/c...p?p_faqid=1992 2. Boot to real dos mode 3. run flash -5v -pd card.pda (this dumps the pda of your card) 4. edit card.pda and change the line '6 109 XX2 1 2b 0 0' to '6 109 3 3 2b 0 0' (replace only the two values after 109) If you have an original orinoco card, then XX is nonexistant, else the two XX are your card-manufacturer-code.) 5. run flash -5v -p card.pda (this flashes the content of card.pda to your card) Now your card has a new PDA but will still behave like a silver card. To really make it to a gold card, you simply have to flash the latest firmware to the card again (with the windows-update utility). After removing and reinserting the card, The Client-Manager version information should show that you have a lucent gold card and that enhanced wep encryption is allowed. Last edited by stargo : 06-21-2004 at 01:46 PM.