HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards

[captcaveman]

I even tried it on a fresh install. Wiped everything clean and tried again. It still doesn't work. Other people with the same card and essentially the same laptop seem to be able to get it to work, what's the deal?

[Evolution-06]

I can even see my wireless networks now, but cannot connect to any of them, i am sitting 4 feet from router.

Apple Airport only gives a couple options for security.

Help!

[mike.thorton]

Thank you!!! I've just got my wifi (bcm 4318 ) on my nx6110 laptop finally working! I use Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, so:

Downloaded and ran the script above, Installed network-manager:

sudo apt-get install network-manager

Turned on the wireless with the wifi button and had to go to "networking" and activated the eth1 interface.

After logout the gnome-network applet appeared in my system bar and then I could see all the broadcasted ssids and connect to them! I've just connected to my wpa2 personal network and did nothing with wpasupplicant. Probably it's been already installed!

Ubuntu rulezz!! compwiz18 rulezz!!

[VividHazE]

Thank you so much! That was incredibly simple and easy to follow. From a fresh install I had my wireless going in literally 2 minutes.

Your a star.

[captcaveman]

So does this only work in 6.06? Cuz I can't get it up in 6.10. That sounded bad. You know what I mean.

[compwiz18]

So does this only work in 6.06? Cuz I can't get it up in 6.10. That sounded bad. You know what I mean.

As far as I know, it works in 6.06...

You have 64bit or 32bit?
edit: you have 32bit.

So the situation is: you can see the wireless networks, you just can not connect to them, correct?

Can you run sudo iwlist scan please?

[wncben]

whatever I did was not stable... the driver interferes with the touchpad, especially with wifi radar and intermittantly will not even allow my wired connection to connect... fargle bargle. I do think that the firmware is the culprit, I am going to try the specific amd64 stuff on a fresh install now that the card has recognizable firmware on it
before I do, let me know if there are any readouts you want... unless you have any idea... wireless mgr sees the networks, but wont assign a address... any ideas?

[wncben]

hey compwiz, sorry this has taken so long, that "fix" i did fixed my touchpad real good... it used a version of the bcm43xx driver, and it conflicted with my touchpad, especially under wifi radar, which is a shame, because radar looks like it is a more sensitive wifi manager. I think that the firmware had been screwed up by HP so I am trying a fresh install yet again... the one thing that the fw cutter did was at least install working fw into the card, hopefully your howto will work now, wish me luck.

[wncben]

OK, so I did a fresh instal, and ran your x64 howto, with kernel 2.6.19.2 and ndiswrapper 1.37 and am now wireless, though the little network icon on the top tray shows no connection. I had to pust the wifi button on keyboard to initially get light, then i had to set up the network under the admin menu, then reboot to get to this point. I am convinced that the fw was the culprit, and that i needed to reset whatever HP did using fwcutter which both fixed the fw problem, and broke everything else, but allowed a fresh place to begin from. I would recomend that if folks are running hp laptops and the howto did not work that they try using fwcutter to get the firmware from a current driver, and then they may have to reinstall, or somehow start fresh. but before I did the fw cutter thing I had a dead card, and on this reinstall i did everything the same as before, but have a working card.
I am going to try network manager to see if i can manage connections.

to clarify, I did NOT use fw cutter on this reinstall, I think it reset the crappy hp fw and allowed the script and ndiswrapper to talk to the card.

[compwiz18]

OK, so I did a fresh instal, and ran your x64 howto, with kernel 2.6.19.2 and ndiswrapper 1.37 and am now wireless, though the little network icon on the top tray shows no connection. I had to pust the wifi button on keyboard to initially get light, then i had to set up the network under the admin menu, then reboot to get to this point. I am convinced that the fw was the culprit, and that i needed to reset whatever HP did using fwcutter which both fixed the fw problem, and broke everything else, but allowed a fresh place to begin from. I would recomend that if folks are running hp laptops and the howto did not work that they try using fwcutter to get the firmware from a current driver, and then they may have to reinstall, or somehow start fresh. but before I did the fw cutter thing I had a dead card, and on this reinstall i did everything the same as before, but have a working card.
I am going to try network manager to see if i can manage connections.

to clarify, I did NOT use fw cutter on this reinstall, I think it reset the crappy hp fw and allowed the script and ndiswrapper to talk to the card.

Could you post the firmware you used?

I think some other people here (captcaveman) could benefit by doing the same thing you did...

and just to clarify - you can't use wifi-radar and the bcm43xx firmware together - that is a no-no - it doesn't work for some reason.