Broadcom 4318 wireless again ...

[Klaus-Peter Schrage]

Ian Chapman wrote:
> Klaus-Peter Schrage wrote:
>> I have been struggling with my wireless since FC 5. Although on a 
>> comparatively rare hardware (Apple ibook - ppc), problems were 
>> similar to those reported by users with a different architecture. I 
>> have tried the old-style driver (bcm43xx) as well as the new-style 
>> one (bcm43xx_mac80211). After a lot of reading, some reports to 
>> bugzilla (which turned out to be quite responsive and helpful, btw), 
>> and long and sometimes frustrating experimentation, I got both 
>> drivers to associate somehow, but eventually I stuck with the old one 
>> which seemed to be more reliable and gave me a stable connection with 
>> WPA encryption.
>
> Well FWIW Klaus I have very similar problems. I currently have F7 
> installed on a PowerBook G4 but I'm using the 2.6.20 kernel from FC6, 
> ie the old driver and I'm also using WPA. For me the old driver with 
> the V3 firmware just works, no problems. Any newer kernel requiring 
> using the new driver and V4 firmware is problematic. It is setup 
> correctly, associates all that sort of stuff but I get lots of packet 
> loss, connection drop-outs etc. Often the Powerbook G4 just simply 
> locks up solid. So I think it simply isn't stable enough yet. 
> Interestingly I also have a PC laptop with a wireless NIC plugged into 
> the PC card slot. The chipset is identical to the chipset in the 
> powerbook (Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN 
> Controller (rev 03)) and it behaves identically, despite being a 
> different architecture. So I also have the 2.6.20 kernel from FC6 in 
> use on that. So I think your efforts might be in vain but of course if 
> you do get it working, please post your efforts :-)
Ian, did you ever try new Fedora kernel with the old driver, as I do? 
The new kernels don't 'require' to use the new driver, bcm43xx is still 
in the most recent kernel which works well for me. See the following 
link on how to switch to the new driver:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2007-July/msg02069.html
I'm dealing with the new driver now and then just out of curiosity ...