rb433 wireless disappearing

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

I have a problem where once the system was installed on the 70’ tower, the radio cards disappeared. It has a 24v POE (poe-24i) power supply that can supply 800ma and it worked fine at my desk. The radios appear under the listing of pci devices but not under interfaces. Various recent routeros versions exhibit the same issues. I have 3 cm9 radio cards in it. cm9 are very reliable low power consumption radio cards. I will try another power supply and/or removing a card just in case it is a power draw problem. Any other ideas?

[admin@MikroTik] > /system package print 
Flags: X - disabled 
 #   NAME                    VERSION                    SCHEDULED              
 0   security                3.14rc1                                           
 1   routeros-mipsbe         3.14rc1                                           
 2   system                  3.14rc1                                           
 3 X ipv6                    3.14rc1                                           
 4   wireless                3.14rc1                                           
 5 X mpls                    3.14rc1                                           
 6 X routing                 3.14rc1                                           
 7   routerboard             3.14rc1                                           
 8   dhcp                    3.14rc1                                           
 9   advanced-tools          3.14rc1                                           
10   ppp                     3.14rc1                                           
11 X hotspot                 3.14rc1                                           
[admin@MikroTik] > /system resource pci print 
 # DEVICE   VENDOR                        NAME                       IRQ       
 0 00:14.0  Atheros Communications, Inc.  AR5212 802.11abg NIC (r... 50        
 1 00:13.0  Atheros Communications, Inc.  AR5212 802.11abg NIC (r... 49        
 2 00:12.0  Atheros Communications, Inc.  AR5212 802.11abg NIC (r... 255       
[admin@MikroTik] > /interface print           
Flags: D - dynamic, X - disabled, R - running, S - slave 
 #     NAME                                              TYPE             MTU  
 0  R  ether1                                            ether            1500 
 1  X  ether2                                            ether            1500 
 2  X  ether3                                            ether            1500 
[admin@MikroTik] > /log print                 
00:00:15 system,info installed routeros-mipsbe-3.14rc1 
00:00:19 system,error,critical System rebooted because of kernel failure 
00:00:19 system,info router rebooted 
00:00:33 system,info,account user admin logged in from 10.0.18.8 via telnet 
00:12:56 system,info,account user admin logged in from 10.0.18.31 via ftp 
00:13:03 system,info,account user admin logged out from 10.0.18.31 via ftp 

[admin@MikroTik] > 
[admin@MikroTik] /interface wireless> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running 
[admin@MikroTik] >
2

Just tried it with a 6amp power supply, no dice. Got someone going up the tower now for testing it with fewer cards.

update:
Wireless does not work with a card in the middle minipci slot. 2 cards and no wireless if the middle slot is used. Any combination of wireless cards is OK as long as the middle slot is not used. (the card that was in the middle slot works OK in other slots. So it’s working now with 2 cards using the bottom and top slots.

3

well, just tested - 3 CM6 cards (with AR5212) and everything works nicely in RB433, check your RouterBOOT version.

also tested with CM9 cards (with AR523) and they work too

also AM9 cards (with AR521)

then tried mixed number of cards and chipsets and everything is working nicely

maybe one of your cards is damaged?

4

Thanks for investigating! I am using 2.16 routerboard booting firmware.

The card that didn’t work in the middle slot is now working fine in a different slot. Must be a bad minicpi slot or something. It’s permanently installed now, so I won’t mess with it or swap it out any further. It was just kinda odd that one bad slot or card would make all three radios not work.

5

well, if you can, try to install card, that you know is working, into middle slot and see if it is working, so you get to know - where is the problem, because swapping cards back and forth should not cause any problems on RB433 or make some “distraction” that drivers for cards does not get loaded.