HOWTO: Dell Inspiron E1505 Wireless (Broadcom 1390 WLAN)

[paperdiesel]

Thanks for the guide paperdiesel. It got me a long way but there are still some issues:

Status now is that I can scan the environment for WLAN's, but I cannot connect to my own. So the good thing is that the WiFi is up and running.

Installed wifi-radar but when I click the application from the menu nothing happens; it just won't start. I installed network-manager but this program does not appear in my KDE menu. Don't know how to start it from commandline. I did try to comment out all the entries in /etc/network/interfaces and rebooted as you pointed out, but no luck there either.
In my interfaces file there is an entry for my wireless-essid and wireless-key under the eth1 part. I'm stuck here to make use of my WLAN.

Another thing that worries me a bit is that it seems I have two drivers active:
The output for sudo ndiswrapper -l gives me:

bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311:1028:0007) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)
device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

(I recall that sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf allready gave me feedback that the driver was already loaded/present. Although I exactly followed your steps in removing old ndiswrapper and driver files, I think my attempts one month ago with the old driver and ndiswrapper still left some traces on my system).

Thanks for any help to get me going.

Coverman,

There are a couple of things you can try. If you'd like to see if you can connect using your current setup, then I'd recommend manually editing your /etc/network/interfaces file. Sometimes you have to change the wireless-key line a little bit. For example, if your wifi network is wep secured with an open key, your line in the interfaces file would look like

wireless-key open [password]

where [password] is your key. Or, if that doesn't work, put the open part AFTER the password. Give those a shot. Keep in mind that in the interfaces file, the password must start with s: if it's in ascii form, or not if it's in hex form.

Alternatively, you could totally back out and wipe your system of any ndiswrapper modules. Do this

sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
sudo ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5
sudo ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5 
sudo apt-get remove ndiwrapper-utils

The second ndiswrapper -e might give you an error, but do it anyway. Then in a terminal go to the directory where you extracted the ndiswrapper PROGRAM, and do

sudo make uninstall
sudo make uninstall
sudo make uninstall
sudo make uninstall

That should pretty well wipe it clean. Then pick back up with the how-to, paying careful attention not to do the wrong commands twice, NO TYPOS when doing the ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf command, etc.

[paperdiesel]

Stephen47 - did you find out why 915 res couldnt be found? I have the same errro message and my 1280 x 800 laptop screen looks pretty naff in 1024 x 768. any pointers will be appreciated
thnx

l.

Londoh,

The command is

sudo apt-get install 915resolution

If it's saying it can't be found, then you need to make sure that you have the right repository enabled in your sources list. The easiest way to go about this is to go here http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/x11/915resolution and enable the repository that owns it. Or just download it right off that page and install it with

sudo dpkg -i [packagename]

where [packagename] is the name of the downloaded package.

[paperdiesel]

sorry, paperdeisel has banned me from this thread

Stephen, I did not ban you from anything. I'm not a moderator -- I have no ban powers. I simply responded to your snide remark by saying I wasn't willing to help you anymore.

[Stephen47]

I didn't consider them snide

[HodKling]

Thanks this post has helped alot, but.... everytime I boot my Dell Inspiron 1705 I have to go to a terminal windows and type modprobe ndiswrapper. Im a newbie so I would appreciate help. I cant seem to figure out how to get this to happen on its own at boot.

UPDATE:
Thanks to eq235 on his post. Once I took the time to read through this post I found the solution. Edit /etc/modules and add ndiswrapper and save.

Thanks

[lbrigman]

Is this HowTo done because the fw-cutter/bcm42xx native drivers don't work
on a laptop or is it just seemed simpler this way (which it my no means simple as
it will break on any of the kernel updates) ?

[paperdiesel]

Is this HowTo done because the fw-cutter/bcm42xx native drivers don't work
on a laptop or is it just seemed simpler this way (which it my no means simple as
it will break on any of the kernel updates) ?

It's done because the fw-cutter method doesn't work with the 1390 on the E1505. It's true that if you update your kernel, you'll have to compile a new version of the ndiswrapper program to match your new kernel. But that takes all of ten seconds, and is much simpler than going out and buying a new wireless card.

[HarrisonHopkins]

Ok, I just installed Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. Whenever I try "sudo apt-get install build-essential", I get a "E: couldn't find package build-essential." Is it because my laptop wasn't connected to internet when I installed Kubuntu?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found out how to get it to work. Had to uncomment the repositories in the sources list.

[Grin]

Thank you so much paperdiesel, i´ve go an inspiron 1501 and to make work my card i´ve just changed the driver R140747 by the R140745 but at the end the message was bcmwl5 invalid driver so i tried sudo ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5 and then sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf. Afterthat the wireless card was working perfectly

[Grin]

Well, everything was working but with the reboot my wireless interface doesn't appear so i need to do modprobe ndsiwrapper again.
What happens? it seems that i'm the only one who has this problem. Must i do anything to make the process automatic?Thanks