Troubles with wireless dell inspiron 1420

dryfire1 · #1 16th March 2009, 02:15 PM

Yes I'm a newbie. I have a Dell inspiron 1420 and its set up as a dual boot. Windows/Fedora.
I cant get the wireless card to work. I review some previous posts but still cant get it working.
I would appreciate some help.

I did a /sbin/lspci
Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)

I did $rpm -q b43-fwcutter
b43-fwcutter-011-3.fc9.i386

stoat · #2 16th March 2009, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dryfire1

I did a /sbin/lspci
Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)

Hello dryfire1,

That particular chipset is an interesting one in that it uses the PCI bus in spite of its name. That is why it appears in the lspci report, I guess. Anyway, it is not supported by the b43 driver. So you can stop all efforts related to that.

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...43#unsupported

It also is not known to work with the new Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA driver. But on the bright side, it is known to work well with ndiswrapper and the Windows XP driver for it. Here are two example threads...

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=208922
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=211851

If you have any questions about anything that you read there, I recommend that you return here to your new thread to ask them. But of course, do what you want.

dryfire1 · #3 20th March 2009, 01:38 PM

Thanks Stoat for the reply, I been still working on it. I am unable to find a wireless xp drivers. Also I decided to upgrade to fedora 10. Which is another problem I'm having.
I am pretty much Linux illiterate

stoat · #4 21st March 2009, 12:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dryfire1

I am unable to find a wireless xp drivers.

You can try a Windows driver (the INF and SYS files, usually) for XP, W2K, or even Windows 98. Just don't waste your time with the card's Vista driver. Those are known not to work well with ndiswrapper. Some places to get a Windows driver include the CD that came with the wireless device (the folder on the CD usually gives a clue), the Internet (your card's brand web site), or the system folders of your Windows system (sometimes those files have unexpected names, but they can be found out).

dryfire1 · #5 9th September 2009, 02:54 AM

OK IM back. I found a this week how to install fedora 11 on a stick. Its working great but when i plug the stick into my work computer it finds the wireless.yea .using danger-mouse's script.
But my Inspiron 1420 wireless still doesn't work. Well danger-mouse do you have another script that will work on this wireless card? Chipset is supposed to be BCM4315 /BCM22062000
Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-CARD Rev 2.10
Can you save the day???

stoat · #6 9th September 2009, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dryfire1

But my Inspiron 1420 wireless still doesn't work. Well danger-mouse do you have another script that will work on this wireless card? Chipset is supposed to be BCM4315 /BCM22062000

Hello again dryfire1,

While you wait for Dangermouse to respond to that, you may be able to clear up one thing. The lspci report for that card which you published in the first post above identified it as BCM4310. The BCM4310 at one time was specifically mentioned by linuxwireless.org (the home of b43) as not supported by b43 (what Dangermouse's script installs). However, now linuxwireless.org mentions support for that chipset as a work in progress. That may explain why you've had such a bad time with this device. It still may not be ready for prime time yet.

But sometimes the Chip-ID does not correlate well to the PCI-ID. And now there is list of supported chipsets by PCI-ID at linuxwireless.org. If you care to, you can run the verbose version of the lspci command to get the PCI-ID number and compare it to the list of those currently supported by b43.

Code:

/sbin/lspci -nn | grep -i network

dryfire1 · #7 9th September 2009, 03:08 PM

I got "Chipset is supposed to be BCM4315 /BCM22062000
Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-CARD Rev 2.10 from the widows wireless view."

Stoat , couldn't get the terminal to accept /sbin/lspci -nn | grep -i network
it would take lspci -nn | grep -i network and came back with:
0c:00.0 Network Controller [0280] : Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
I appreciate the help

stoat · #8 9th September 2009, 04:05 PM

Okay, that chipset is known to work with the new Broadcom 802.11 STA Linux driver (aka broacom-wl). I found Internet examples of it working specifically with that PCI-ID number. You can read the simple steps to install it here...

http://www.cenolan.com/2009/06/insta...-in-fedora-11/

dryfire1 · #9 11th September 2009, 02:38 PM

Stoat I went to that sight and went step by step, It took about 6hours to do all the updates.
and after all that it didn't see the wireless card light up.
I am a newbie. I just don't know what to look for or where to look.

stoat · #10 11th September 2009, 06:25 PM

Take a moment to confirm what is installed related to the kernel and the broadcom-wl driver. It may help some.

Code:

rpm -qa | grep -e kernel -e wl

dryfire1 · #11 13th September 2009, 02:40 AM

[stoat , here is what i got

[liveuser@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep -e kernel -e wl
kmod-wl-5.10.91.9-4.fc11.2.i586
kernel-firmware-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.noarch
kernel-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.i586
iwl5000-firmware-8.24.2.12-1.fc11.noarch
kmod-wl-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.i586-5.10.91.9-4.fc11.2.i586
kerneloops-0.12-5.fc11.i586
kernel-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586
iwl4965-firmware-228.61.2.24-1.fc11.noarch
broadcom-wl-5.10.91.9-1.fc11.noarch
iwl3945-firmware-15.32.2.9-1.fc11.noarch

stoat · #12 13th September 2009, 03:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dryfire1 rearranged

kernel-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.i586
kernel-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586

broadcom-wl-5.10.91.9-1.fc11.noarch
kmod-wl-5.10.91.9-4.fc11.2.i586
kmod-wl-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.i586-5.10.91.9-4.fc11.2.i586

kernel-firmware-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.noarch
kerneloops-0.12-5.fc11.i586

iwl3945-firmware-15.32.2.9-1.fc11.noarch
iwl4965-firmware-228.61.2.24-1.fc11.noarch
iwl5000-firmware-8.24.2.12-1.fc11.noarch

Everything appears to be there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dryfire

...and after all that it didn't see the wireless card light up.
I am a newbie. I just don't know what to look for or where to look.

Well, don't pay much attention to wireless card LEDs. It's not unheard of for them to behave differently or not come on at all. The place to look first is the NetworkManager panel applet. You didn't mention that, so did you? Left-click it. That's is where the list of available networks is located.

If no wireless networks there, check if the wl module is being loaded...

Code:

lsmod | sort

Also check for conflicting wireless modules. That can happen when other Broadcom driver methods have been tried and forgotten about.

dryfire1 · #13 13th September 2009, 03:05 AM

[liveuser@localhost ~]$ lsmod | sort
acpi_cpufreq 8212 0
ata_generic 4312 0
bluetooth 44776 5 sco,bnep,l2cap
bnep 10888 2
bridge 41488 0
cpufreq_ondemand 6052 2
crc_itu_t 1580 1 firewire_core
dcdbas 6776 1 dell_laptop
dell_laptop 3304 0
dm_multipath 13512 0
drm 166212 2 i915
fat 41008 1 vfat
firewire_core 36492 1 firewire_ohci
firewire_ohci 19116 0
fuse 49748 2
i2c_algo_bit 4836 1 i915
i2c_core 18056 4 i2c_i801,i915,drm,i2c_algo_bit
i2c_i801 8056 0
i915 144488 2
ip6table_filter 3136 1
ip6_tables 10728 1 ip6table_filter
ip6t_REJECT 3160 2
ipv6 232324 22 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6
iTCO_vendor_support 2736 1 iTCO_wdt
iTCO_wdt 10448 0
joydev 8972 0
l2cap 18884 3 bnep
llc 4780 2 bridge,stp
mmc_core 41536 1 sdhci
Module Size Used by
nf_conntrack_ipv6 11368 2
output 2364 1 video
pata_acpi 3668 0
pcspkr 2156 0
ricoh_mmc 3416 0
sco 9356 2
sdhci 14112 1 sdhci_pci
sdhci_pci 6388 0
snd 49044 10 snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_ hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_hda_codec 54264 2 snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_codec_idt 50560 1
snd_hda_intel 23920 2
snd_hwdep 6580 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_page_alloc 7572 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_pcm 62520 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer 17896 1 snd_pcm
soundcore 5404 1 snd
squashfs 19472 2
stp 1944 1 bridge
sunrpc 152364 1
tg3 91440 0
uinput 6496 0
usb_storage 82508 1
uvcvideo 49752 0
v4l1_compat 11560 2 uvcvideo,videodev
vfat 8620 1
video 17360 1 i915
videodev 32216 1 uvcvideo
wmi 5868 0

dryfire1 · #14 13th September 2009, 03:12 AM

The place to look first is the NetworkManager panel applet. You didn't mention that, so did you? Left-click it. That's is where the list of available networks is located.

I'm real slow, NetworkManger panel , is this in the top right corner? or is under Sytem? Its not bringing up the card to bring up the available networks.

stoat · #15 13th September 2009, 03:23 AM

The module is not loaded. It won't go far without that. Try manually loading it...

Code:

su
modprobe wl

If that command seems to succeed (it may spew some warnings about deprecated files and .conf file endings, but that's okay), then check the Network Manager panel applet again. If nothing good has happened, then check for the wl module in the lsmod report again. If it's there, then try manually restarting NetworkManager...

Code:

su
service NetworkManager restart

Check the panel applet again for networks (or your router).