thebenedict
October 26th, 2010, 11:43 PM
Hi all,
After considerable forum searching I still can't get my broadcom 4353 rev 1 wireless card to consistently work on this Dell 1440 laptop (posting from a wired connection). Irritatingly I can't identify what's different between when it is working and not working.
Symptoms:
On boot the wireless card is always disabled and lshw -C network shows the card as UNCLAIMED. I can enable the card by pressing F2, but it will not find or connect to any wireless networks.
System->Administration>Hardware Drivers allows me to load the "Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver", after which the output of lshw -C network is:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Broadcom Corporation
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: c4:46:19:80:8a:df
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl1 driverversion=5.60.48.36 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:17 memory:f69fc000-f69fffff
where the digit after "driver=wl" depends on the number of times I've reloaded the driver.
Now if I remove the driver, lshw -C network still shows:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Broadcom Corporation
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: c4:46:19:80:8a:df
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl1 driverversion=5.60.48.36 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:17 memory:f69fc000-f69fffff
At some point in this process the wireless card will sometimes start working, but it doesn't seem to be related to whether or not the STA driver is shown as active in Hardware Drivers, as long as I've loaded it at least once once since the last reboot.
Other information:
michael@ubuntu:~$ lspci -n | grep 14e4
0c:00.0 0280: 14e4:4353 (rev 01)
michael@ubuntu:~$ rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
michael@ubuntu:~$ sudo iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
eth1 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:44 Mb/s Tx-Power:off
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Managementmode:All packets received
Link Quality=5/5 Signal level=0 dBm Noise level=0 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
I'm at a loss for how to continue troubleshooting this. Let me know if further information would be helpful. Thanks a lot.
--Michael
After considerable forum searching I still can't get my broadcom 4353 rev 1 wireless card to consistently work on this Dell 1440 laptop (posting from a wired connection). Irritatingly I can't identify what's different between when it is working and not working.
Symptoms:
On boot the wireless card is always disabled and lshw -C network shows the card as UNCLAIMED. I can enable the card by pressing F2, but it will not find or connect to any wireless networks.
System->Administration>Hardware Drivers allows me to load the "Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver", after which the output of lshw -C network is:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Broadcom Corporation
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: c4:46:19:80:8a:df
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl1 driverversion=5.60.48.36 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:17 memory:f69fc000-f69fffff
where the digit after "driver=wl" depends on the number of times I've reloaded the driver.
Now if I remove the driver, lshw -C network still shows:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Broadcom Corporation
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: c4:46:19:80:8a:df
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl1 driverversion=5.60.48.36 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:17 memory:f69fc000-f69fffff
At some point in this process the wireless card will sometimes start working, but it doesn't seem to be related to whether or not the STA driver is shown as active in Hardware Drivers, as long as I've loaded it at least once once since the last reboot.
Other information:
michael@ubuntu:~$ lspci -n | grep 14e4
0c:00.0 0280: 14e4:4353 (rev 01)
michael@ubuntu:~$ rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
michael@ubuntu:~$ sudo iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
eth1 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:44 Mb/s Tx-Power:off
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Managementmode:All packets received
Link Quality=5/5 Signal level=0 dBm Noise level=0 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
I'm at a loss for how to continue troubleshooting this. Let me know if further information would be helpful. Thanks a lot.
--Michael