FC5T3 with Linksys WPC54G and bcm43xx driver

[ggulik]

I just installed Fedora Core 5 Test 3 on a Dell 8100 laptop which uses a Linksys WPC54G version 1.2 802.11g card. I quickly discovered that ndiswrapper doesn't work because there appears to be a native bcm43xx driver for the card but at startup it was looking for some firmware:

bcm43xx: Chip ID 0x4306, rev 0x3
bcm43xx: Number of cores: 5
bcm43xx: Core 0: ID 0x800, rev 0x4, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 1: ID 0x812, rev 0x5, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 2: ID 0x80d, rev 0x2, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 3: ID 0x807, rev 0x2, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 4: ID 0x804, rev 0x9, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Detected PHY: Version: 2, Type 2, Revision 2
bcm43xx: Detected Radio: ID: 2205017f (Manuf: 17f Ver: 2050 Rev: 2)
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: set security called
bcm43xx: .level = 1
bcm43xx: .enabled = 1
bcm43xx: .encrypt = 1
SoftMAC: net/ieee80211/softmac/ieee80211softmac_assoc.c:176:ieee80211softmac_asso c_work()
SoftMAC: Associate: Scanning for networks first.
SoftMAC: Associate: failed to initiate scan. Is device up?
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.

Doing several google searches I found that the firmware files can be extracted from the Windows driver file using a tool called bcm43xx-fwcutter which I found at the following location: http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4547

I downloaded and built the fwcutter then used it to extract the firmware and copied all the *.fw files to /lib/firmware

# bcm43xx-fwcutter bcmwl5.sys
# cp *.fw /lib/firmware

So then I pulled out and re-plugged in the wireless card and now I'm getting the following in dmesg:

pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 1
PCI: Enabling device 0000:0d:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:0d:00.0[A] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:0d:00.0 to 64
bcm43xx: Chip ID 0x4306, rev 0x3
bcm43xx: Number of cores: 5
bcm43xx: Core 0: ID 0x800, rev 0x4, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 1: ID 0x812, rev 0x5, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 2: ID 0x80d, rev 0x2, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 3: ID 0x807, rev 0x2, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 4: ID 0x804, rev 0x9, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Detected PHY: Version: 2, Type 2, Revision 2
bcm43xx: Detected Radio: ID: 2205017f (Manuf: 17f Ver: 2050 Rev: 2)
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: set security called
bcm43xx: .level = 1
bcm43xx: .enabled = 1
bcm43xx: .encrypt = 1
SoftMAC: net/ieee80211/softmac/ieee80211softmac_assoc.c:176:ieee80211softmac_asso c_work()
SoftMAC: Associate: Scanning for networks first.
SoftMAC: Associate: failed to initiate scan. Is device up?
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Radio turned on
bcm43xx: Chip initialized
bcm43xx: DMA initialized
bcm43xx: 80211 cores initialized
bcm43xx: Keys cleared
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: DMA 0x0200 (RX) max used slots: 1/64
bcm43xx: DMA 0x0260 (TX) max used slots: 0/512
bcm43xx: DMA 0x0240 (TX) max used slots: 0/512
bcm43xx: DMA 0x0220 (TX) max used slots: 0/512
bcm43xx: DMA 0x0200 (TX) max used slots: 0/512


Ok, it says the radio is off so I tried to manually turn the radio on with "iwconfig eth1 txpower auto" but I get:

Error for wireless request "Set Tx Power" (8B26) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; No such device.

Any ideas? I'm stumped.

[smfinley]

I filed a bug on something similar. See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=179538 . Also there's a mailing list discussion on this at https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2006-February/msg00019.html . With FC5test3 I can't get it to work on my machine at all although it worked sporadically on test 2.

[HunterWare]

I think there there is a bug with the bcm43xx driver. I have a BCM4306 and tried the same steps you did using the drivers from Dell. I got the same results. I've looked around and saw some mentions of problems with SoftMAC, someone else talked of a race condition between the driver and the kernel. I never saw an answer. I blacklisted the driver in modules.conf and alias'd eth1 to ndiswrapper with "option ndiswrapper if_name=eth1". This works fine with system-config-network etc etc. I can't, however, get NetworkManager to work like it did with FC4. nm-applet sees the card, does scans, but never connects.

*sigh*

Otherwise FC5T3..... Wow, beautiful, fast, suspend works... happy days

- Hunter