wifi, ndiswrapper and 2.6.17 kernels...

[David G. Miller]

Kim Lux <lux at diesel-research.com> wrote: 

>I run FC4 on an HP ZD7280 laptop that has a Broadcom wifi modem in it.
>I've been running it with ndiswrapper on a variety of kernels for the
>last 2 years.  It has worked great. 
>
>So, this weekend I upgraded to a 2.6.17 kernel and now wifi doesn't
>work.  And I can't get it working.  I tried ndiswrapper versions 1.14
>and 1.23.  uname -r  = 2.6.17-1.2143_FC4smp.
>
>I heard that 2.6.17 ships with bcm43xx.   The driver files for my wifi
>modem are bcmwl5 and bcmwl5a.
>
>/sbin/lsmod | grep bcm43
>bcm43xx               440009  0
>ieee80211softmac       36673  1 bcm43xx
>ieee80211              37641  2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac
>
>/sbin/lsmod | grep ndiswrapper
><empty>
>
>What am I missing ?  How do I get it running ?
>
Check dmesg output.  The only way I got bcm43xx to work on my HP zv6015 
was by turning off WEP authentication at the AP.  This may be a problem 
that is specific to my AP. 

You don't mention using fwcutter to set up the firmware for bcm43xx.  
fwcutter (available from extras I think) includes a README file 
regarding how to extract and then configure the firmware for the bcm43xx 
module.  More documentation at 
http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=Documentation.  You can also try a google 
search for "bcm43xx  fwcutter".

Cheers,
Dave

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