[SOLVED] Install Fedora 12 Dell Wireless 1350 (802.11b/g) WLAN miniPCI Card

[jastanle84]

I have a Dell Latitude D800 with a Dell Wireless 1350 (802.11b/g) WLAN miniPCI Card. I need to install wireless on this laptop but I see no wireless card when I know I have the above wireless card. Here are some commands that I ran that I might prove useful:

[root@jastanle84 ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34M [GeForce FX Go5200 64M] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705M Gigabit Ethernet (rev 01)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7510 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:01.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7510,7610 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7410,7510,7610 OHCI-Lynx Controller
02:01.3 System peripheral: Texas Instruments PCI7410,7510,7610 PCI Firmware Loading Function

[root@jastanle84 ~]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:1F:21:EA:EB
inet addr:192.168.1.105 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20f:1fff:fe21:eaeb/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:10703 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6034 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:15757106 (15.0 MiB) TX bytes:443364 (432.9 KiB)
Interrupt:11

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:480 (480.0 b) TX bytes:480 (480.0 b)

[root@jastanle84 ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

Can anyone help as I would love wireless on this laptop?

[stoat]

Hello jastanle84,

Dells very commonly use wireless cards with Broadcom chipsets, and that 1350 WLAN MiniPCI card in particular is known to use a Broadcom chipset. And those cards usually use the PCI bus, so it should appear very clearly in the lspci report. But it doesn't. So maybe the device is somehow disabled (e.g., by BIOS, by software, by a physical button or switch). Or maybe this one is using the Universal Serial Bus and will appear in the lsusb report. Anyway, there is a good chance that you will need to install either a driver or firmware for a built-in driver. There is even a slight chance that it will "just work" using the OpenFWWF b43 firmware included in the Fedora and available via update in Fedora 10 and 11. It all depends on the chipset.

So look for something that may be disabling the wireless card. Does it work in Windows? Is Windows disabling it at shutdown? Try powering down and booting straight into Fedora without first booting Windows. Check the BIOS settings. Did you overlook a button or switch on the card or the computer somewhere?

[jastanle84]

I tried to install the OpenFWWF b43 software below with no success:

[root@jastanle84 ~]# yum install OpenFWWF
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package OpenFWWF available.
Nothing to do
[root@jastanle84 ~]# yum install OpenFWWF b43
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package OpenFWWF available.
No package b43 available.
Nothing to do
[root@jastanle84 ~]#

I am also not using a duall boot Widonws/Linux machine. All I know when I had XP on this machine the wireless worked fine. There also is no switches on the side of the computer that turns the wireless on or off. When I ran the lsusb command this is what I got:

[root@jastanle84 ~]# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 045e:0083 Microsoft Corp. Basic Optical Mouse
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
[root@jastanle84 ~]#

Can someone help me install the OpenFWWF b43 software? Maybe this wiill be a start.

[stoat]

Originally Posted by jastanle84

Can someone help me install the OpenFWWF b43 software?

Why? You haven't determined what chipset is being used by your wireless card. At the moment, OpenFWWF supports only four Broadcom chipsets (BCM4306, BCM4311 (rev1), BCM4318 and BCM4320). Of course do what you want, but it could turn out to be utter folly to start throwing things at this. I mentioned OpenFWWF only to illustrate the necessity of identifying the chipset, not to prod you into blindly hurling that stuff at your wireless card. I also firmly believe that until your wireless card shows up in the lspci report, nothing will make it work. It's not in the lsusb report either.

Originally Posted by jastanle84

I tried to install the OpenFWWF b43 software below with no success:

[root@jastanle84 ~]# yum install OpenFWWF
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package OpenFWWF available.
Nothing to do
[root@jastanle84 ~]# yum install OpenFWWF b43
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package OpenFWWF available.
No package b43 available.
Nothing to do

That package is actually named b43-openfwwf. You can't just make up things like that and expect them to work. It's possible that it's already installed. If it is installed, then this will produce a result with the version...

rpm -q b43-openfwwf

It does no harm to install it even when you don't need it, so here is how to install it if the previous command produced no result...

su
yum install b43-openfwwf

But even if your wireless card uses one of those supported chipset, I don't think it will work until Fedora sees your hardware. Something is disabling it.

[jastanle84]

Here's the result I got from the yum and I still do not see any wireless networks even after I did a reboot.

[jastanle84@jastanle84 ~]$ su -
Password: 
[root@jastanle84 ~]# yum install b43-openfwwf
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Package b43-openfwwf-5.2-3.fc12.noarch already installed and latest version
Nothing to do
[root@jastanle84 ~]#

[stoat]

Originally Posted by jastanle84

Already there

Okay. I still think the card is somehow disabled.

Originally Posted by jastanle84

I am also not using a duall boot Widonws/Linux machine.

So Windows isn't disabling it.

Originally Posted by jastanle84

All I know when I had XP on this machine the wireless worked fine.

So it's not broken.

Originally Posted by jastanle84

There also is no switches on the side of the computer that turns the wireless on or off.

Okay, but it happens all the time.

That leaves the BIOS. I would enter the BIOS setup and look for a setting to enable the wireless card. That also happens all the time. So I would check even if you haven't been in the BIOS setup lately.

[jastanle84]

It was the BIOS setup. I just changed the configurationn and poof!!! the wireless worked fine without installing any new drivers from Fedora 12. Thanks for your hlep.