Compaq Presario c700 Wireless

Jarodin · #1 17th March 2010, 03:18 AM

Hey I am new here and just need some help with my wireless chipset. I installed Fedora 12 on my Compaq Presario c700 Notebook recently and had a great install. I installed ndiswrapper and installed the inf file for my broadcom 4311 driver through ndiswrapper as well. The installation of the driver appeared to go smoothly. The only thing is that I still can not connect to the internet. I aliased the driver as well to wlan0. I can not figure out what is currently the problem. I tried reinstalling the driver and I keep receive a message stating the driver is already installed. If anyone can please direct me to information or help me figure out why my wireless won't work, that would be great.

Thanks!

GoinEasy9 · #2 17th March 2010, 05:24 AM

I have a 4322 in my dell, and I got wireless running by installing broadcom-wl. Some folks have had problems with that package, so installing akmod-wl would bring in the same drivers. You might need the b43-openfwwf firmware package also, if that is not installed, it could be causing your problems (along with the fact that you installed the drivers from somewhere other than the fedora repos). I don't have F12 installed on the laptop with the the 4311 at the moment to check, but if you do a search in PackageKit (Add/Remove Software) for 4311, you should be able to locate what packages you need to get your wifi going.

Bert Rolston · #3 17th March 2010, 05:45 AM

Hey GoinEasy,

Can you tell me which repos / packages contain the broadcom-wl and b43-openfwwf?

Thanks

---------- Post added at 05:45 PM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 05:41 PM CDT ----------

OK so I asked too soon.

The b43-openfwwf package showed up in ADD REMOVE SOFTWARE

Cheers.

GoinEasy9 · #4 17th March 2010, 05:52 AM

FYI - broadcom-wl and/or akmod-wl are in the rpmfusion non-free repo

Bert Rolston · #5 17th March 2010, 06:21 AM

Thanks,

I just found another thread and am installing that package even as we speak.

Bert Rolston · #6 18th March 2010, 01:35 AM

Just a couple of small gotchas.

It appears the wireless switch was causing some problems. Even though I pressed the swithc it wouldn't deactivate / activate the WLAN card. Rebooting didn't help.

I left the machine overnight and started it up the next morning. I held the wireless button donw during boot and it made a lot of mad beeping noise.
Once I was logged in the wireless worked fine using the broadcom-wl package.

NOW for the modem!!!!

Original setup routine is F12 DVD, all updates, then How-toForge "Perfect Fedora Desktop" How-to.
The C700 now has Compiz-fusion and associated bits installed. The new user will be mighty impressed after their VISTA clapped out on the same hardware.

GoinEasy9 · #7 18th March 2010, 01:50 AM

I have a toggle switch on my Dell Studio 17 and a "Press the LED" switch on the XPS 13. The LED switch will mess with me every time .. LOL. I'm glad you got wireless working. For the modem, I'd try Network Manager first (Network Connections under System-->Preferences). If that gives you problems, I've found wvdial to work once you have the .conf set up correctly.

Bert Rolston · #8 26th March 2010, 05:06 AM

More on getting a Broadcom WLAN card working.
Here are a few tips to possibly avoid the GOTCHAS I encountered.

This laptop uses the BROADCOM BCM4311 802.11 b/g WLAN card.

1) I removed the b43* packages and installed the broadcom-wl packages.

2) The machine uses a switch rather than keyboard activation for the WLAN card. It didn't work even after step
1 above.

3) Initially Fedora 12 installed the PAE kernel, which effects the hardware switch. As soon as I installed kernel
2.6.32.9-70.fc12.i686 the wireless switch worked and WLANS were detected. Ironically there weren't any
WLAN cards in the Devices section of Network COnfiguration BUT there is an entry in the HARDWARE
section. I manually added the WLAN card to devices.

So hopefully this helps.
I haven't seen this posted anywhere else BUT I didn't spend lots of time trawling the forum either.