Question Captain DMA 75T — Ekknod Firmware Speed Drop & Stealth Issues

[byte_corvus]

Anyone else seeing their TLP count tank after switching to Ekknod's firmware?

I’ve been testing the Captain DMA 75T (Artix-7). With the standard ufrisk 75t484_x1 bin, the card flies — hitting 8000+ TLP/s and 200MB/s+ throughput. But the moment I flash the Ekknod 'WiFi' stealth firmware, performance falls off a cliff: speed drops to barely 4000 and throughput chokes at a pathetic 40MB/s.

The Technical Breakdown

1. Throughput Failure: 40MB/s usually suggests the PCIE link is down-negotiating or the firmware's TLP handling is inefficient compared to the ufrisk base. On a 75T, you should be seeing double that at minimum.
2. The 'WiFi' Emulation: Ekknod’s FW mimics a network controller. If the BARs aren't configured perfectly or if there's a config space conflict, the OS might be struggling to communicate with the card, leading to those dropped scores.
3. Visibility: If you can't see the device in Device Manager, the spoofing might be 'working' too well, or more likely, the Vid/Pid/Class is mismatched for the drivers your OS is trying to initialize. It should at least appear as an 'Unknown Device' or a 'Network Controller' if the PCIE handshake was successful.

Spoiler: Troubleshooting Steps

1. Check BIOS: Ensure the PCIE slot isn't restricted. Force Gen 2 if you're getting instability or low throughput.
2. Reseat the Card: The Captain cards are notoriously picky about lane contact. A slight tilt can drop you from x1 to some weird half-state.
3. Check for Resource Conflicts: If you're emulating a WiFi card but already have an onboard Intel/Killer WiFi chip active, you might have an IRQ conflict.

I wanted to test this setup for COD since Ricochet's DMA detection is still relatively weak, but if the device isn't even showing up in the manager, building a custom firmware on top of this base is going to be a nightmare.

Who else is running Ekknod on the 75T and actually getting decent speeds?