HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards

[RalphRU]

I had everything working (live cd) from the instructions of The Raven. He indicates the filename to use is bcm4318(1).tar.gz I now can't find that specific filename anymore, or maybe I didn't have it. I was able to go wireless on the live CD. I intalled 7.10 on my Hard Drive - now I am confused again. I did not intall the "restricted drivers" after intalling to my hard drive.

when I key in:

lspci | grep | Broadcomm\ Corporation

I get:

02:03.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306........

I downloaded and ran BCM4318all.tar.gz and do:

sudo ./ndiswrapper_setup

seems like everything loads OK. When I reboot, there is no wireless connection available.

I have all of the different documentation printed out. What file(s) do I need to download and What step am I missing?

Thanks in advance,
Can't go back to XP - at least on my laptop

Ralph - message sent from another outated XP machine

[compwiz18]

@RalphRU: When you reboot the livecd, everything is lost, so you'll have to redownload the file, I suspect.

Also, it looks like you have a BCM4306. It should work fine, though.

If you could post the log file on your desktop, that would be great

Good luck

[tonycm1]

I'm running Gutsy (7.10) and a Broadcom 4318 wireless card on my Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop.

I tried running the:
sudo ./ndiswraper_setup

from terminal while i'm in the desktop directory and after I have extracted the files to the desktop, however, when i run the command above for the setup, i get the following:

tony@tony-laptop:~$ cd ~/Desktop
tony@tony-laptop:~/Desktop$ sudo ./ndiswrapper_setup
[sudo] password for tony:
Starting ndiswrapper install...
If you have any package managers open (i.e. Adept or Synaptic or apt-get),
Please close them now then press Enter.

Gutsy release detected.
Installing ndiswrapper-1.9...

Then the installation just hangs on me at the "installing ndiswrapper-1.9..." phase

What am i missing here?

[NineseveN]

I'm running Gutsy (7.10) and a Broadcom 4318 wireless card on my Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop.

I tried running the:
sudo ./ndiswraper_setup

from terminal while i'm in the desktop directory and after I have extracted the files to the desktop, however, when i run the command above for the setup, i get the following:



Then the installation just hangs on me at the "installing ndiswrapper-1.9..." phase

What am i missing here?

This might be a silly question, but is there a reason you're not running the restricted driver already in Gutsy? It seems to work perfectly fine on my Broadcom card in an HP dv6324us.

[compwiz18]

The restricted driver doesn't work quite as well as the ndiswrapper driver in some situations.

@tonycm1: Did you put the CD in the drive?

[tonycm1]

I've already tried the restricted drivers before and it hasn't worked.


I'm pretty sure I had the CD in there... but it still hangs when installing ndiswrapper-1.9...? I figured it would pick it up from the net if I didn't have the CD in there.... am I wrong on that

Also... anybody else had issues with it hanging at that install stage?

[valke]

well, i have finally upgraded to 7.10, and the issue i have is it keeps asking for my wep key. i keep entering it, and it pops back up a few seconds later. i know i'm putting in the right key. is there any way to address this?

[NineseveN]

I've already tried the restricted drivers before and it hasn't worked.


I'm pretty sure I had the CD in there... but it still hangs when installing ndiswrapper-1.9...? I figured it would pick it up from the net if I didn't have the CD in there.... am I wrong on that

Also... anybody else had issues with it hanging at that install stage?

That happened to me trying to install it in 7.04, I had to have the CD in there IIRC.

[bswindell77]

If you have 7.10 you should no longer have a problem with this card or a lot of others. Juat activate the restricted drivers in the System>Admin>Restricted Drivers manager. It will download the software needed then ask show your firmware (driver disk with windows driverers) and that's it. I set up 3 completely different computers with different wifi cards and they all work perfect.

[tonycm1]

Alright... looks like I had forgotten to put the Ubuntu CD in the drive when running ./ndiswrapper_setup..... after running it with the CD in there, wireless worked PERFECT!!!

I was so damn impressed with this because I had spent about 2 weeks on and off with a bucnh of different guides and this one fixed the problem so damn quick!

The 1 thing i noticed is that the link quality is pretty bad.... for example, I have an external wireless usb which gives me 100% quality (right beside the router) but with the BCM4318, i'm sitting around 60%.... what's the reason for this?