[tlug] Planex GW-450D and Raspberry Pi

[Simon Cozens <simon@example.com>]

OK, I give up. We're using an RPi for a media box, with a Planex GW-450D
USB wifi interface attached to a powered hub. I followed the
instructions on http://www.planex.co.jp/articles/RaspberryPi_GW-450D/ to
use the Ralink driver, since I was experiencing dropouts without
reconnection with the stock kernel driver. (This is with XBian v1.0RC3
with a 3.17.7-ck2+ kernel.)

The driver works *reasonably* well, however:

Network scanning seems to be pretty poor. I have to kick it off manually
with a "iwlist ra0 scanning". The first time I run this it produces no
results, then subsequent runs pick up my (open) wireless network eventually.

Then I have to use wicd-curses to configure the wifi manually on boot,
even though I've configured it to automatically connect (possibly
because it isn't properly seeing the network on first scan?) which means
plugging in my laptop over ethernet and SSHing in - not ideal for a
media server.

Worse, I'm still experiencing dropouts from time to time and it's not
reconnecting. It's nowhere near as bad as the stock kernel driver, but
it's still annoying.

Oh, and then there's all this stuff in dmesg:

[  274.861207]
/home/xbian/gw-450d_driver_linux_v3002/mt7610u_wifi_sta_v3002_dpo_20130916/os/linux/../../chips/mt76x0.c:2114
assert (pAd->TxPower[choffset].Channel == 36)failed
[  274.874871] ERROR!!! E2PROM: WRONG VERSION 0x2, should be 1
[  274.885340] mt76x0_read_tx_alc_info_from_eeprom:
EEPROM_MT76x0_TEMPERATURE_OFFSET (0xD1) = 0xf8
[  274.885368] mt76x0_read_tx_alc_info_from_eeprom: TemperatureOffset =
0xfffffff8
[  274.885378] Temperature Tx ALC not enabled
[  274.906112] 3. Phy Mode = 31
[  274.906139] AntCfgInit: primary/secondary ant 0/1
[  274.913158] RTMPSetPhyMode: channel is out of range, use first channel=1

For once Google has not provided anything useful. Does anyone else have
any clues?

Simon