Wireless network problems - Dell Inspiron 1501

Frank Cox theatre at sasktel.net
Thu Jan 10 14:48:18 UTC 2008


On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:20:21 -0500
"John W. Linville" <linville at redhat.com> wrote:


> Why did you "have" to do that?

As stated above, I "had to do that" because that's the only way that I found to
make this wireless card work.

> Did you consider simply installing
> the proper firmware so that the b43 driver would access the card?

I spent most of a day searching for and downloading assorted firmware and
drivers for Broadcom wireless chipsets from multiple sources, running
b43-fwcutter, and so on. The only one that I managed to find that can actually
see this BCM94311MCG chipset is R151519.EXE downloaded directly from Dell's
website.

R151519.EXE and ndiswrapper work, and I can use that combination to get online.
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to support wireless security, at least not
the way that I currently have it set up. It just silently fails to log into my
router when the router is set for "WEP/WEP2" as it usually is -- changing the
security setting on my router to "disabled" allows it to work fine.

If there is a better driver that you or anyone else is aware of, I'm certainly
prepared to hear about it.


-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com




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