[clue-tech] broadcom wireless help anyone?

[mike havlicek]

Hello,

The laptop doesn't have a physical switch for it does it? :)

Either way I got around a broadcom problem a couple of years ago
by putting in a card until whatever it was on mine (acer aspire 5050-3371)
(BCM4318 according to OpenBSD 4.4) ... eventually worked with
rhel4 but not suse (novell enterprise something) and I think there
was some jerking at the switch on the laptop (probably to no avail).
Probably alot of cursing too :)

If I remember correctly I used the cheapest SMC card I could find
at MicroCenter until the broadcom magically worked. 

You might take a look at "ACPI-WMI"

This might have something to do with why you don't see it in the 
BIOS ...  might be more hp thing than broadcom:)

-------(2.6.18.7 gconfig info)-----------------------------------------

WMI (EXPERIMENTAL) ACPI_WMI

This driver adds support for the ACPI-WMI (Windows Management
Instrumentation) mapper device (PNP0C14) found on some systems.

ACPI-WMI is a proprietary extension to ACPI to expose parts of the
ACPI firmware to userspace - this is done through various vendor
defined methods and data blocks in a PNP0C14 device, which are then
made available for userspace to call.

The implementation of this in Linux currently only exposes this to
other kernel space drivers.

This driver is a required dependency to build the firmware specific
drivers needed on many machines, including Acer and HP laptops.

It is safe to enable this driver even if your DSDT doesn't define
any ACPI-WMI devices.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git-commits-head/2008/2/7/766334


-Mike 


--- On Wed, 2/25/09, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com>
> Subject: [clue-tech] broadcom wireless help anyone?
> To: "CLUE technical discussion" <clue-tech at cluedenver.org>
> Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 7:55 PM
> I just revived an older laptop (hp ze4600) with builtin
> broadcom (ie
> crap) wireless. Even after numerous defrags, it was
> impossible to
> resize the xp ntfs, so I just loaded linux - first sidux
> then current
> ubuntu. Both use the latest debian approach b43-fwcutter
> and b43legacy
> kernel module for the BCM4306 ver 02 card. Also tried
> ndiswrapper, but
> no joy there either.
> 
> After massive googling, I'm pretty sure this wireless
> chip is just
> plain unusable on linux.
> 
> Anybody have suggestions for an available plugin card that
> will work?
> Also, how does such a card work in a unit that already has
> builtin
> wireless? I see nothing in the bios for turning off the
> builtin card.
> 
> -- 
> Collins Richey
>      If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and
> the worries
>      of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.
> _______________________________________________
> clue-tech mailing list
> clue-tech at cluedenver.org
> http://www.cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech