HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards

[amudman]

Hopefully to help you: I tried you method with a Broadcom BCM 4306 (pci 14e4:4320). But no luck. It is possible that the card is dead.

I need your kind of help... click and run. At my age it is too late to ever become good enoogh using terminal langauge as I have many retirement hobbies besides my effort on a 'puter. But I am trying.

To you and everyone of you that work so hard to help, I thank you and hope you continue such fine effort. Linux is obviously moving in a very positive direction and the work of so many is really very impressive. I have stumbled around with several Linux versions. My latest effort with Ubuntu has been fantastic except for the wireless connection, but I'll add wireless eats my lunch in windows.

Thank you for your help and effort.

[18atm]

Had to drop the bomb and re-install fresh, then worked like a charm.

[lerch527]

this worked for me using eighther method on a v5201us the only thing i add after a fresh install and update is wifi-radar

[grivako]

Well I have never posted on one of these sites as I never expect a response but im at a desperate point. I've just installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn for the first time on my Compaq Presario V2000 with a Broadcom 4318 wireless adapter built in. When it was first installed it showed eth1 as wireless in the Network Settings window. But even after inputting the IP address for DHCP and static even, neither one worked. Also the wifi button did not light up blue as it had with Windows. So I found this page, followed the steps laid out in the first area. And when it got tot he part where I was supposed to go the System>Administration>Network, there was no longer a wireless card detected, only the ehternet as eth0, eth1 was gone.

When i tried to configure anything in Terminal it usually told me 'E: Couldn't find package ndiswrapper-common' over and over no matter what i put in. Nothing seems to work and the wireless card seems to have vanished. I went to the Synaptics manager (as a side not im not connected to the internet as the wireless router is far from my PC so I can't stay in the other room to look at the scripts for what to do next so I am not connected to the internet through the linux) and looked under repositories, but network manager and etc were already there and it seemd Univers was already selected and running, as far as i could tell anyway. As to what happened to my wireless card IDK. I actually reformatted and reinstalled Ubuntu after a day or so of that, it came back up again, i went through your steps again and it disappeared once more. I have no idea what to do now and it seems after going through tons of forum sites everyone assumes that once you install the ndiswrapper you card is supposed to appear in the Network Settings window, which it has not. And they dont say what to do if that happens.

Please give me some advice here, I switched to Linux but I did not realize it was going to be so difficult to do the most minor tasks compared to Windows. Why is there so much complexity in this thing?

Signed---Frustrated

[Bosonator]

Hi Grivako,

Well, take heart, because I've found the people in the Ubuntu forums are both responsive and courteous. This really is my favourite forum in which to post.

As for your laptop, I have the exact same model, and I think I've seen the same problem as you. In any case, here's what I do:
1. Install Ubuntu. Actually I use Kubuntu, but I think the only difference is that I use the "knetworkmanager" instead of "network-manager-gnome".
2. Download and run Compwiz's script (on the first page of this thread)
3. Find a wired connection somehow and install the "ndiswrapper-common", "network-manager", and "network-manager-gnome" packages (supposedly this shouldn't be necessary, but it's what I always seem to have to do).
4. Run Compwiz's script again.

This is typically enough to get it working for me. Hope it does it for you too! If not, try posting again and including the "log" file that got created when you ran the script, and someone should be able to get you off the ground.

- Bosonator

P.S. As an added (unrelated) bonus, take a look at this post to get your ATI graphics card configured for speed: ATI Radeon Xpress

[bootiec84]

I'm very frustrated and out of ideas!

I've been trying to get Feisty to use my wireless card for a week now. I'm very adept at windows and programming, but brand new to Linux and tackling this problem is out of my league right now.



OK: I've used the very user-friendly code on the first post of this thread and even several of the small tips ppl have added along the way, including the reinstall of network-manager that Bostonator suggested. I am so close I can practically taste it. here's what I have...

I install ndiswrapper 1.9 that is on my Ubuntu CD. then install the 64bit drivers provided by the first post. This works, enabling me to see my wireless network in the manager. BUT when i try to connect, it just sits there and then times out, never connecting. I have tried to manually connect by turning the 'roam' function off in the network settings and entering all the data in myself. This seems to work, b/c the icon tells me that I'm connected, but firefox says I have to connection when I try to load google.



PLEASE HELP, THIS IS VERY FRUSTRATING TO BE SO CLOSE TO A FIX!



I have a Compaq Presario V5000 w/ a AMD turion64. I am trying to use the 64bit Ubuntu edition...could there be a prob w/ the broadcom 4318 and the 64bit driver? I have included my log file in case it will help.

[Bosonator]

I'm very frustrated and out of ideas!

...This works, enabling me to see my wireless network in the manager. BUT when i try to connect, it just sits there and then times out, never connecting.

Do you have WPA encryption enabled on your router? If so, that would be your problem. There's a bug in the Feisty ndiswrapper drivers that doesn't allow connection using WPA. Frig, eh? Although I haven't tried it myself, there is a way to fix this by compiling the newest ndiswrapper from source. Maybe one of the nice men or women in this forum could point you to info about how to do that.

Or you could do what I did... roll back to Edgy Eft, where everything works beautifully. But I'm not a paragon of patience, so maybe I'm a bad example Good luck, whatever you choose!

[grivako]

Well i tried to reinstall ndiswrapper but no luck. I have no idea how to install ndiswrapper-common, i try the apt-get but no luck, just says E: Couldn't find the package error message. I think network-manager is installed, the gnome one doesnt install either, still no idea how to do that it seems. I have the card in the device manager list, but the driver just will not work at all. Ndiswrapper seems to install after i used the bcm4318x64.tar.gz and tell it to install, it goes though alot of stuff but nothing changes, even after i tried rebooting, nothing at all happens. The first time it removed eth1 from the Network list and was no longer able to be even configured. Something is very wrong and I have no idea what to do. No matter how many times i run the ndiswrapper or try to update, nothing changes. It's getting to be more trouble than its worth

[bootiec84]

Do you have WPA encryption enabled on your router? If so, that would be your problem.

Nope, I usually just have a MAC address filter. But for getting this up and running I have turned all encryption off. (Don't hack my net)

Thanks for the good try, any other ideas?

[papinix]

Hi,thanks thanks
finnally i'm using wireless on my asus a6km with bcm4318
NOTE when i tried use ndiswrapper i had a problem with the file bcmwl5.inf in the downloaded from the 1st page bcm4318x64.networkmanager.tar.gz because the file name .sys don't match with file .inf
so i juste renamed file .sys
and so i' got 54m on my wireless
best regards