HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards

[feed_sparky]

I have an HP dv5215us with a Broadcom 4318 internal wireless card and I can not get ndiswrapper to work
I have tried with SuSE with no luck, I heard that Ubuntu was much better at recognizing the broadcomcards...
I have attached my log file if that helps at all... did I mention that I'm a linux newbie
Please help!

[bilbobagins]

Hi just to say thanks for the howto followed the recipe and it "just worked" now have 100 % signal strength from a miserable 7-10% with the old linksys card. and 50 M/Bits Thanks

[wncben]

Calaver, I think you need to use the 2.6.18.5 kernel...

[compwiz18]

The 2.6.19-1 kernel doesn't include ndiswrapper.ko. I can't do anything with this kernel regarding ndiswrapper. Did I miss something?

Yep - gotta compile ndiswrapper your self.

Instructions: http://compwiz18.blackhole.cx/bcm4318/howto.htm
Read Downloading Required Files, and download _just_ the ndiswrapper one, not the kernel stuff.
Then skip to number 6 and 7 (Extract ndiswrapper and Compile ndiswrapper) under Installing and Compiling. Now exit that page, and reboot.

[compwiz18]

Hi just to say thanks for the howto followed the recipe and it "just worked" now have 100 % signal strength from a miserable 7-10% with the old linksys card. and 50 M/Bits Thanks

No, actually you don't Ubuntu's version of ndiswrapper is a bit buggy, and will always report 100% strength - if you don't want that, then compile the new version:

Instructions: http://compwiz18.blackhole.cx/bcm4318/howto.htm
Read Downloading Required Files, and download _just_ the ndiswrapper one, not the kernel stuff.
Then skip to number 6 and 7 (Extract ndiswrapper and Compile ndiswrapper) under Installing and Compiling. Now exit that page, and reboot.

[ljamie82]

Ok I have what could be VERY important information.

I, like a large minority, failed to get the internet to work by following this procedure. After trying again and again (I know I did it correctly, I'm not a complete newb), I decided to try another distro to see if this was an Ubuntu issue.

Well I installed Mandriva 2007 and used the gui to configure ndiswrapper and boom! 100% signal strength! Now I'm not convinced this is an ubuntu issue just yet. One of the prompts told me it had to install wpa_supplicant ... i never bothered to install that because I don't use wpa encryption. The guide did not say to install it either. But for some reason mandriva found it necessary.

If you've followed the guide and still can't get it to work, try installing wpa_supplicant (i think that's the way it's spelled). One thing to note though, I did get the driver installed with ndiswrapper in Ubuntu... I was one of the few that when I typed iwlist scan I saw networks, just couldn't connect, even when I turned off wep on the router.

I look forward to hearing how this works for someone... in the meantime, i'm sticking with what works.

[compwiz18]

I'll check this out. I'm reformatting soon (hard drive corruption), so I'll let you people know what I find out.

[Cruiser]

Took me a couple attempts to get it done (and a reinstall over my fresh install to clear what I broke) to get it working, but I got there. I had to run threw the 6 sudo commands listed under troubleshooting to get up and running but it all worked.

Many thanks from a day old Ubuntu user. =D>

[ljamie82]

So I went and tried to reinstall Ubuntu, going with what I had figured out from getting it to work under Mandriva. It did not work. I am not running a livecd of PCLinuxOS, no longer based on mandriva, and I am online.

There is a problem within the ubuntu distro that only affects a small group of broadband 4318 chipsets. I believe that there is nothing i could do to get it to work unfortunately. But that is ok. I've always liked PCLinuxOS. Just wish I could use compiz or beryl. Some day

[feed_sparky]

OK, i realized my mistake...I didn't have ndiswrapper installed when I ran the script! So now I can see my card in the network settings and can see my network but I have no signal strength and I can't connect

EDIT:
OK, it works! Finally! For some reason I had to change the encryption from Hex to Plain (ASCII) even though I have no ecryption right now... when I did this my card connected immediatly