bcm4318 - Can It Work with Newer Kernels?

[John W. Linville]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 10:33:25AM -0500, Rick Bilonick wrote:
> 
> > Blacklist the bcm43xx driver and then you can simply use ndiswrapper in 
> > the usual way.
> > 
> 
> It is already blacklisted in the two files that control blacklisting yet
> I have the problem as described. I use ndiswrapper (with the bcm43xx
> blacklisted) when I run the older kernel (it's running the old version 3
> firmware bcml5.inf or something similar.) I've put the new version 4
> firmware in /lib/firmware after using fwcutter. I just boot with new
> kernel so ndiswrapper should still be invoked.I have the latest version
> of ndiswrapper available for F6. I no  longer get error messages about
> the firmware being too old. It also says the radio is turned on (used to
> say the radio was off). dmesg shows no errors.

One or both of us is confused...

If you are using ndiswrapper, then it does not matter what (if
anything) you have in /lib/firmware.  I can offer you no support
with ndiswrapper.

If you are in fact using the bcm43xx driver, then you must use version
3 firmware, extracted with bcm43xx-fwcutter.

If you are using b43legacy then you need version 3 firmware.  If you
are using b43 then you need version 4 firmware.  In either case,
whether the firmware needs to be extracted with bcm43xx-fwcutter or
rather with b43-fwcutter depends on exactly which kernel you are using.

If you got a message that you needed version 4 firmware, that suggests
that you are using the b43 driver.  It is not clear to me exactly
which kernel you are using.  What is the output of 'uname -r'?

You mentioned FC6.  I must recommend that you move forward at least
to F7.  FWIW, you will find much better support for your 4318 there.
F8 is better still.

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville at redhat.com