Figure I’d make a post to see if others have had any success. I have a broadcom 4311 (or something like that) in my laptop. When I installed SUSE11 during alpha it was broken, so I used ndiswrapper. Just wonder, anyone able to get the bcm drivers to work, and if I should try to use it or stick to ndiswrapper, which is working fine.
have you tried the firmware patch for it? bcm43xx? solves the problems with this driver i believe.
I would highly recommend the new b43 driver. It’s part of the kernel now; bcm43xx was the old driver that has now been replaced by b43.
Check out this link for the firmware and instructions:
b43 - Linux Wireless
You’re using the b43 driver from 2.6.25 if you’re running a default 11.0 installation.
Moved to pre-release Beta forum.
andrewd18 wrote:
> quickshade;1815520 Wrote:
>> Figure I’d make a post to see if others have had any success. I have a
>> broadcom 4311 (or something like that) in my laptop. When I installed
>> SUSE11 during alpha it was broken, so I used ndiswrapper. Just wonder,
>> anyone able to get the bcm drivers to work, and if I should try to use
>> it or stick to ndiswrapper, which is working fine.
> I would highly recommend the new b43 driver. It’s part of the kernel
> now; bcm43xx was the old driver that has now been replaced by b43.
>
> Check out this link for the firmware and instructions:
> ‘b43 - Linux Wireless’
> (http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware)
>
> You’re using the b43 driver from 2.6.25 if you’re running a default
> 11.0 installation.
The b43 driver in kernel 2.6.25 (used on openSUSE 11.0) works well with both
flavors of BCM4311’s, as well as BCM4312 (b/g mode only), BCM4318, BCM4306
(late models). BCM4301, BCM4303, and BCM4306/2 also work, but they use
b43legacy as their driver. The BCM4310, which is a b/g device with a newer
PHY and radio, and any “pre-n” devices will not work yet. The RE work
proceeds on them. In addition, none of the dual-mode devices will work in
802.11a mode. Again, this capability is in progress, but with lower priority.
Please note that it is not a “firmware patch” that is needed. The reason that
b43 will not work “out of the box” is that Broadcom refuses to let anyone
distribute their firmware. The only reason it works at all is that the
bcm43xx group that has reverse engineered the device also wrote the routines
that extract the firmware blobs from Broadcom’s drivers for other operating
systems. Obtaining the extraction program, the driver for the other OS, and
doing the extraction is what is outlined at linuxwireless.org. The bcm43xx
team is now working on reverse-engineering the firmware as well. Once that
effort succeeds, then the firmware can be included with the distro.
Larry
Yea the firmware was never the issue, my laptop didn’t play nice with wireless, the kernel and bcm. I just went and updated everything and removed ndiswrapper, then installed the b43 driver. After the first reboot it didn’t work, But I forgot that I had to switch the driver in network settings to use b43, not ndiswrapper. Did that and wireless pops right up, even better is that I don’t get a configuration stage anymore, something that would take 15-20 seconds before. Not to mention my wireless strength bar now works.
quickshade wrote:
> Yea the firmware was never the issue, my laptop didn’t play nice with
> wireless, the kernel and bcm. I just went and updated everything and
> removed ndiswrapper, then installed the b43 driver. After the first
> reboot it didn’t work, But I forgot that I had to switch the driver in
> network settings to use b43, not ndiswrapper. Did that and wireless
> pops right up, even better is that I don’t get a configuration stage
> anymore, something that would take 15-20 seconds before. Not to mention
> my wireless strength bar now works.
That is the way it should be.
Larry
excellent. glad it’s sorted.