Rock5 E-key only wifi card compatibility?

#1

Hi there,

I have been tested out two of my m.2 E-key only wifi card (intel 9560ngw and intel ax201ngw) with the daily radxa debian build, both are resulted with “PCIe Link Fail” and “failed to initialized host” on rk-pcie fe170000.pcie and fe150000.pcie. Is this expected? (i am aware that radxa didnt test this two common OEM favorite card)

However I did have a test on m.2 A+E-key card (intel 8265ngw), the kernel did attempting to load firmware for those card.

I was wondering if my issue with m.2 E-key card were due to firmware/driver not being available or rock5 cant communicate with m.2 E-key NGFF card at all (hardware limitation?)?

thanks.

#2

Intel 9560 has a CNVio interface (details here) and AX201NGW has a CNVio2 interface (details here) that are not supported on our boards. Only cards with PCIe interface are supported.

#3

i see, didnt know that it was not using pci-e protocol.
thanks for the response on this.

#4

You need a basic AX200 or AX210 module. Some if the models which are cheaper are designed for Intel chipset motherboards with some functions relegated to the chipset. Kind of like the old host based modems of yesteryear.

#5

Not just “some functions” - in CNVio(2), almost the entire Wi-Fi hardware is integrated into the CPU. The M.2 card is just a radio frontend, as well as a licensing dongle to enable the inbuilt Wi-Fi hardware.