wireless connection in laptop [solved]

[mystified]

I recently purchased an Acer laptop. Mandriva doesn't recognize the card which is built in. I called Acer and the only thing they could tell me was that it's a Broadcom. I have googled this and not found anything.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

 

mysti

[ianw1974]

If you do an lspci, does it show the card? It will display a bit of info on it. You can then see if there is a Linux driver for it, or alternatively use ndiswrapper with the WinXP driver for the machine.

 

If you happen to have a dualboot with Windows, you could see how it's currently recognised from here, unless you've not got it, then lspci will be the way forward.

 

If you decide on the ndiswrapper solution, check their website, and the drivers listed here should match the id against the lspci results.

[mystified]

In windows for network adaptors it shows a Broadcom 802.11g and a SIS 900-Based PCI Fast Ethernet Adaptor and that's all. I guess I'll have to google some more to find a driver but I haven't much luck so far.

[ianw1974]

The lspci should help to give you some info. If you can post the output from the lspci for the broadcomm, I'll see what I can dig up for you.

[mystified]

Here's what lspci lists: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 (AirForce One 54g) I'm googling to see if I can come up with something.

[ianw1974]

OK, if nothing for Linux:

 

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawi...x.php/Main_Page

 

Go into the list of cards, and search for the broadcomm, but make a note of the pciid of your card, as you'll need this to get a perfect match for the driver. I think an lspci -v should do the trick for this.

 

Then you can just urpmi ndiswrapper, and wpa_supplicant as well if you want to use WPA-PSK to secure the link. You can then continue the install guide from ndiswrapper -i filename.inf, and it'll work fine.

 

Make sure you add "ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.preload

[lynchmob]

For what it's worth:

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/

I have steered away from Broadcom stuff because of thier utter lack of official support. I ran across this link at the Linux Wireless site.

HTH

lynchmob

[tyme]

broadcom doesn't support linux, that's why you have to use ndiswrapper. as i pointed out in #musb, this is the driver for the 3000 series aspire laptop wireless cards. that's what you need to use with ndiswrapper.

 

in the list on ndiswrapper yours is the first one listed in section B. be sure to read the part about noapic nolapic acpi=off. it also has a link to the driver.

[Ixthusdan]

ndiswrapper. Look in C:Windows\802BG\bcmwl5.sys. Just load it using the Mandriva tools and it will fire right up.

[mystified]

Thanks Ix! It worked like a charm. :D