presario F500 broadcom wireless.. wont activate..

[hewlett2002000]

i am trying to get my wireless working. it is a broadcom card but im not sure what model. i got it to see it but it wont activate. im trying to stay away from ndiswrapper. heres a screenshot of what it says when i try to activate.

http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h28/hewlett2002000/snapshot1.jpg

any help is greatly appreciated.
thanks,
John

[b_martinez]

read this thread
link (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=177678&highlight=b43fwcutter) and see if it helps you.
bill

[hewlett2002000]

thank you VERY much!!! that did it. i followed the instructions in this link and its working great now.

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43?action=show&redirect=en%2Fusers%2FDrivers%2Fbcm43xx#devicefirm ware

thanks again!!!
John

[b_martinez]

You're welcome.
Now please edit the title of the post to reflect that your problem is solved. Or ask a moderator to do it for you.
bill

[mdzin]

You're welcome.
Now please edit the title of the post to reflect that your problem is solved. Or ask a moderator to do it for you.
bill

Hi,

i'm so exited in reading on your success. I'm really new to linux.
My laptop model is same as yours. I had follow the link that you had
posted. I can't understand what it is saying.

Can you help me please? :(

[bbfuller]

Hello mdzin

Welcome to the forum.

We really need to determine exactly what type of wireless chipset you have in your card first.

Open a terminal window and in it type:

/sbin/lspci

tap the enter key and copy and paste back the results. All of them if you need to, but preferably jsut those for 'network' and 'ethernet' devices.

We'll talk some more then.

[mdzin]

Hi bbfuller,

thanks for the response.

Here is the result :-
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 02)

FYI i had the same error msg as attach by hewlett2002000.

Many thks in advanced.

[bbfuller]

Hello mdzin

The error message as shown in the first post is caused by trying to control the wireless card the wrong way. As you can see from the title bar of the applet, that is "Network Device Control". It lives on the System Menu in the illustration under Administration. There is another application there called 'Network' which will perform the same task and give the same error message.

Those two controllers are no longer the default way for connecting to wireless in F8 and F9. The new default method is something called NetworkManager which lives on the top Gnome Panel just to the left of the clock. For some reason it's not apparent on the picture in Post #1. It runs as a service and will actively prevent the other 'Network' control programs getting a look in.

Once you have the firmware cut then you should be able to left click on NetworkManager and see a list of available wireless networks. Left clicking on yours should prompt for any encryption key.

However, you do need to install the firmware first.

The notes below explain what to do for your card:

Download this file and put it into a directory somewhere:

http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2

Acquire full root rights over your machine with this command in a terminal window:

su -

That's a space and a minus sign after the su. It gives you full root rights over your machine rather than just root rights over your ordinary users environment without it.

Use the cd command to navigate into the directory where you downloaded the above file. Issue the command:

tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2

That unpacks the file archive you downloaded and will create you a new directory where you are working called 'broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5'.

cd into that and then the 'driver' directory within that and use the command:

b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o

That cuts the required firmware for your card from the downloaded file and places it in the correct place for the b43 driver to find it.

Check and see if you have NetworkManager showing on the top Gnome Panel to the right in the notification area. If you have ignore the next part.

Go to the "Gnome System Menu - Administration - Services", tick NetworkManager and NetworkMangerDispatcher, make sure they are started and the settings are saved so they start at next boot.

{The above paragraph is only necessary for Fedora 8 definitely not for Fedora 9}

Restart the machine and left clicking on the NetworkManager icon should bring up a list of wireless access points to connect to.

Be aware that the notes refer to both F8 and F9, the methods differ very slightly towards the end.

If you have trouble with any of that, post back and let me know exactly where the problem is and we'll see what we can do.

[mdzin]

Hello mdzin

The error message as shown in the first post is caused by trying to control the wireless card the wrong way. As you can see from the title bar of the applet, that is "Network Device Control". It lives on the System Menu in the illustration under Administration. There is another application there called 'Network' which will perform the same task and give the same error message.

Those two controllers are no longer the default way for connecting to wireless in F8 and F9. The new default method is something called NetworkManager which lives on the top Gnome Panel just to the left of the clock. For some reason it's not apparent on the picture in Post #1. It runs as a service and will actively prevent the other 'Network' control programs getting a look in.

Once you have the firmware cut then you should be able to left click on NetworkManager and see a list of available wireless networks. Left clicking on yours should prompt for any encryption key.

However, you do need to install the firmware first.

The notes below explain what to do for your card:



Be aware that the notes refer to both F8 and F9, the methods differ very slightly towards the end.

If you have trouble with any of that, post back and let me know exactly where the problem is and we'll see what we can do.

Hi bbfuller,

thanks for your kind assistant. It work like a charm now. Base on your instruction, it only took me 10 min to install and make it work.


Thanks again :)

[bbfuller]

Hello mdzin

Good news!

If you managed that in ten minutes I forecast you'll do very well with Linux.

See you around the Forum.