Wireless on Asus Laptop - do I need drivers

diyfiesta · #1 24th July 2006, 09:20 PM

Hi Folks,

I've got Fedora 5 setup on my Asus laptop (A6Km) which is all great, the 'normal' network adapter is fine (I'm using it now!) and it detects the wireless adapter hardware ok, so I wonder, do I need additional drivers to get this to work?

lspci looks like this,

Code:

00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

The standard network tools look like they'll let me setup my network but it fails to initialise eth1 ("no link, check cable etc"). So I'm not sure if its the driver (missing?) or something else? I wanted to check before getting stuck into ndiwrapper perhaps needlessly.

Any suggestions greatly appreicated, thanks all,
Toby

markmaus · #2 24th July 2006, 09:55 PM

I know that you will need to install a firmware cutter (fwcutter) and use it to strip the driver out of your windows driver before it will ever work. I've never done it, but there's plenty of posts here about it. I prefer the ndiswrapper route. If you type:
dmesg | more
(press the space bar to scroll down)
You will see a lot of complaints in there about no drivers loaded for bcm43xx

diyfiesta · #3 25th July 2006, 10:04 AM

Cheers,

I'll see what demsg says when I get home, I've used ndiswrapper before so am fairly happy with that - I suspect I'll end up using that, I just didn't want to do something that Linux "just does" for me, oh well.

Its funny, as a friend just bought a laptop and threw unbuntu on it, almost everything (including wireless) works off the bat.

Thanks again,
Toby

markmaus · #4 25th July 2006, 12:18 PM

I was also excited when I first loaded Core 5 and it appeared that my Broadcom 4306 wifi was configured. But without the firmware loaded, bcm43xx module only gets in the way. Also, you will only get B speeds with bcm43xx. While ndiswrapper runs my card at G speeds. I've got my laptop dual booting Ubuntu-Dapper and Core 5. I've got to admit, Ubuntu is pretty slick. They have this application called Automatix, and it configures all of the mp3, dvd libraries, java, flash, you name it. It even installed Google Earth! Good luck.

diyfiesta · #5 25th July 2006, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by markmaus

I was also excited when I first loaded Core 5 and it appeared that my Broadcom 4306 wifi was configured. But without the firmware loaded, bcm43xx module only gets in the way. Also, you will only get B speeds with bcm43xx. While ndiswrapper runs my card at G speeds. I've got my laptop dual booting Ubuntu-Dapper and Core 5. I've got to admit, Ubuntu is pretty slick. They have this application called Automatix, and it configures all of the mp3, dvd libraries, java, flash, you name it. It even installed Google Earth! Good luck.

Thanks, I just spotted my dmesg output lists loads of stuff about bcm43xx see below. Its useful to see your comments as I guess your saying go straight to ndiswrapper. Do you know if I'll have to Delete the configuration for eth1 from Network Configurations? How will things appear when ndiswrapper's working - will I be able to manage things through the standard tools?

I'll be giving it a go now to see?

Code:

bcm43xx driver
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:09.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 193
bcm43xx: Chip ID 0x4318, rev 0x2
bcm43xx: Number of cores: 4
bcm43xx: Core 0: ID 0x800, rev 0xd, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 1: ID 0x812, rev 0x9, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 2: ID 0x804, rev 0xc, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 3: ID 0x80d, rev 0x7, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Detected PHY: Version: 3, Type 2, Revision 7
bcm43xx: Detected Radio: ID: 8205017f (Manuf: 17f Ver: 2050 Rev: 8)
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: set security called
bcm43xx:    .active_key = 0
bcm43xx:    .level = 1
bcm43xx:    .enabled = 1
bcm43xx:    .encrypt = 1
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.

diyfiesta · #6 25th July 2006, 07:41 PM

groan...

I've got ndiswrapper installed and the right driver setup, all nice and easy via yum and atrpms...

...I now have a problem configuring ndiswrapper (as from http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...p/Installation), the version of wireless tools difers it seems...

Code:

Warning: Driver for device eth1 has been compiled with version 20
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 19.
Some things may be broken...

eth1      IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:off/any  Nickname:"Broadcom 4318"
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Invalid   Bit Rate=1 Mb/s
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

I tried downloading the wireless tools v20, but can't 'make' it - loads of errors. Is there an easier way? can yum not save the day?

Cheers

Toby