Getting bcm4318 wifi card to work with Fedora 6 & 8

[Richard England]

Peter Reed wrote:
> On Thursday 27 December 2007 05:29:21 am Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, 27 Dec 2007, Rick Bilonick wrote:
>>     
>>> Several weeks ago I posted that my Broadcom bcm4318 mini pci wifi
>>> card stopped working with Fedora 6 kernels after 2.6.20-1.2962.fc6
>>> in a Dell Inspiron 2200. I had used ndiswrapper and the error
>>> messages I was getting seemed to indicate that I needed new
>>> firmware. Apparently, this was coming from the newer native bcm43xx
>>> driver built into the newer kernels - not from ndiswrapper. No one
>>> seemed to have any clue what was wrong. I inadvertently discovered
>>> that the reason was that ndiswrapper needed the b43 driver
>>> blacklisted (in addition to blacklisting the bcm43xx driver) for the
>>> newer kernels. I found a mention of blacklisting the b43 driver in
>>> someone's posting on the Internet.
>>>
>>> I discovered this when I temporarily switched a hard drive from a
>>> different laptop (a Toshiba Satellite A15-S129) that had Fedora 8
>>> installed without ndiswrapper. When I put the F8 drive in the Dell
>>> with the 4318 mini pci wifi card, I still could not get the 4318 to
>>> work with the native drivers (it seemed so close - but would ALWAYS
>>> end up causing the system to freeze while networkmanager was trying
>>> to connect). IMO, the native bcm43xx drivers just will not work with
>>> the 4318 in the Dell Inspiron 2200 under F8. (Maybe someone has it
>>> working and can prove me wrong.) Once I blacklisted the b43 and used
>>> ndiswrapper with bcmwl5.inf, the 4318 worked under F8 (and it works
>>> very well as it did before under F6, and blacklisting b43 under F6
>>> also works with the newer F6 kernels). So at least I know when I
>>> install F8 on the Dell's own hard drive I will be able to use the
>>> 4318.
>>>       
>> well, now that i've beaten jigdo to within an inch of its life, maybe
>> i should go back and "cookbook-ify" my wiki page on fedora and
>> broadcom wireless:
>>
>> http://www.crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Broadcom_wireless_on_Fedora
>>
>> i haven't looked at it in over a month, and it may be that things have
>> improved since then.  unless there's already a decent HOWTO on that
>> somewhere.  john?
>>
>> rday
>> --
>> ========================================================================
>> Robert P. J. Day
>> Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
>> Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
>>
>> http://crashcourse.ca
>> ========================================================================
>>     
>
> I have to say I think the site has been hacked you might want to check.
> Peter
>
>   
Try this, instead
http://www.crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Broadcom_wireless_on_Fedora_8

~~R