HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards

[physeetcosmo]

The toggle switch that used to show power to the wireless card doesn't blink (searching) or go steady (connected). How can I ensure the wireless card is enabled?

I would check your BIOS first, many times the BIOS defaults the peripherals to "OFF" and even if you "enable" them in the OS, the BIOS is still master and has it shut off.

If it IS enabled in the BIOS, I'd do:

lspci

or

lsusb

to verify that the device is actually installed properly. Look for the name of your Wireless card in the list. The reason I say "either" of these commands is that MY wireless card on the eeePC is actually part of the USB bus and you have to list the USB bus rather than the PCI bus to check for it being installed properly. I don't know if your laptop has the same configuration, but I thought I'd cover all the bases.

Let us know if you re-install works.

[Itchmecho]

Sorry to revive this thread, but i would like to see it a bit updated, like for 9.04 Jaunty. I tried this, as i still am an ubuntu newb, and it worked perfectly on my Dell latitude D510 Thank you

[reboskyz24]

lspci did return the adapter

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 760/M760 Host (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 25)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 91)
00:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
00:0b.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter

Going though the steps then rebooting enabled the card (light on front now blinks when active...when Windows XP was installed, the light was solid when enabled).

[cocopuffz]

I can log into a WEP protected network, but when it's WPA2 it's very, very instable. I'll be able to log into a WPA2 1 out of 30 attempts... maybe. WEP no problems...

Is there a way of making it stable when connecting to a WPA2 personal network?

[julio prada]

Hi cocopuffz, i used to have the contrary, problems with WEP but no problem with WPA2.
Could it be an old driver? the router?
My Ubuntu 9.04 recognized the card (though not inmediately), so I did not have to install NDIS wrapper with a Windows driver like other people.
Certainly the Broadcom 4318 is a problematic card!

[ebooa]

greetings

i've recently spent nearly 2days with the installation of this driver under ubuntu 9.10 (karmic) and after having busted some crackers this is the conclusion i got.


I tried installing the b43-fwcutter-011 and b43-fwcutter-012 with the wl_apsta_3.130.20.0 and i had no configuration setup for the wireless driver. So i researched a little and decided to try and install the broadcom-wl-4.178.10.4 and the broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0 drivers but still i had no wireless device.
i then decided to use an older driver now considered deprecated for the newer versions the bcm43xx-fwcutter-006 and somehow the wireless activation got detected but when i tried accessing the wireless networks it showed none.
I then reminded myself that when i had intrepid (8.04) i had to do some editing under the modprobe.d blacklisted files. After i edited the blacklist files at modprobe.d i restarted the networking and it worked just fine with all wireless networking detecting and without losing connection for the past 2hours.

Therefore this is what i think it worked out amongst all of this and hope it turns out helpfull if anyone needs it.

1.ºGo to these links and download bcm43xx-fwcutter-006.tar.bz2
http://developer.berlios.de/project/...?group_id=4547

and

http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2 (direct link)

At your terminal go to the folder where you downloaded bcm43xx-fwcutter to and do as it follows
"sudo tar xvjf bcm43xx-fwcutter-006.tar.bz2"
"cd bcm43xx-fwcutter-006"
"make"
"cd .."

do this same protocol for b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2

2.º Go to this link and download the drivers there into a folder of your choice https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx

Here i used this link to configure the bcm43xx firmware
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...b43#fw-bcm43xx

i looked for the b43-fwcutter-012 tutorial at the top of the guide and the bcm43xx tutorial at the bottom of the page to the the exports to /lib/firmware

Apart from the "wget" commands in the tutorial, i ran them exactly as they are explained.I also used the b43-fwcutter to install the following firmware

"sudo b43-fwcutter --unsupported -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta_mimo.o"


3.º After having done this i did a "sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf" and edited it as it follows

# Warning: This file is autogenerated by bcmwl-kernel-source. All changes to this file will be lost.
#blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
#blacklist ssb
blacklist bcm43xx

4.º I then ran the collowing command under root mode "/etc/init.d/networking restart"

It reconfigured my network devices but i still had to reboot it. After that it got connected immediately.



All this might sound noobish to some advanced users but it worked out for me and if you guys can make it out i hope it turns out to work as well as it is for me.

[Sugi]

Hello everyone,
Just wanted to let everyone know, I had great success with "Compaq Presario V5000" in 10.04 Lucid Lynx with wireless Broadcom b43. This was by far the easiest it has ever been. Nice!

The Process / Fix (Just like the original poster's thread comment):
1. Go to Hardware Drivers:
Terminal > $ /usr/bin/jockey-gtk
OR (Both does the same thing!)
System > Admninistration > Hardware Drivers.

2. Enable Broadcom B43 Wireless Drivers

3. Reboot and Enjoy! (MUST REBOOT)

I remember working on this same laptop within hardy and hating myself for even trying, but I was just unlucky during that time.

Sugi

[Aggienator]

Hello everyone,
Just wanted to let everyone know, I had great success with "Compaq Presario V5000" in 10.04 Lucid Lynx with wireless Broadcom b43. This was by far the easiest it has ever been. Nice!

The Process / Fix (Just like the original poster's thread comment:
1. Go to Hardware Drivers:
Terminal > $ /usr/bin/jockey-gtk
System > Admninistration > Hardware Drivers.

2. Enable Broadcom B43 Wireless Drivers

3. Reboot and Enjoy! (MUST REBOOT)

I remember working on this same laptop within hardy and hating myself for even trying, but I was just unlucky during that time.

Sugi

Just set up 10.04 Ubuntu studio on an Acer Aspire 3000. When I try the above methods to install the driver I get:

SystemError: Failed to lock /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

Can anyone suggest a solution?

Many thanks

[Sugi]

Just set up 10.04 Ubuntu studio on an Acer Aspire 3000. When I try the above methods to install the driver I get:

SystemError: Failed to lock /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

Can anyone suggest a solution?

Many thanks

Hello Aggienator,
It sounds like you have more then one instant of the package manager running,
IE: Software Center, Synaptic, apt-get, and Aptitude.
Make sure to close down all others and then process.

P.S.:
I might have explained my above post incorrectly. If so, it's fixed now.
Terminal > $ "/usr/bin/jockey-gtk" is the same thing as "System > Admninistration > Hardware Drivers".

Good Luck,
Sugi

[Aggienator]

Thanks Sugi: that was the problem!

Now all I have to do is actually turn the wireless on, Pressing the on button on the laptop achieves nothing. Just beginning to wonder if it is broken