sony vaio wirelss ubuntu 8.10

[b.a.whitaker]

i have a sony vaio laptop, i believe it is a v505 model. i have had it for about 5 or 6 years. i'd been neglecting it for years thinking it had just become out-dated and junk. the other day however i decided to download ubuntu 8.10 on my desktop and install it on my sony. it was like a resurrection in my bedroom, i was amazed and thrilled at how easy my old laptop came back to life with speed and agility to boot. it even attempted to connect to the wireless i have been borrowing from my neighbor and managed to connect twice giving me lengthy opportunities to surf the net on her, but it didn't last. its been hours since i was last able to connect to the wireless signal which i am exploiting now to send this message from my desktop and i don't know why. i called my brother and he thought perhaps the drivers were not working properly, but then how could i have connected just fine twice? i don't think he gets it, but maybe one of you helpful folks who have endured this sob story to the end does get it and if its you i need your help getting my little miracle back onto the interweb.
thanks a million
peace

[Joe2Shoe]

Do you have the Broadcom BCM4306 chip in your Vaio?
Maybe your neighbor encrypted/secured her network from freeloaders in the neighborhood.
Install NDISwrapper for 8.10 (make sure you download the 3 correct packages), and good luck with 8.10.
I uninstalled 8.10 and went back to 8.04 to get my connection working again.
7.04 was even better, I may even reinstall that version of Ubuntu.
Good luck.
Joe2Shoe.

[Joe2Shoe]

2 good links.
The first one worked for me.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper#configure

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff