this is the wireless card i used on my compaq v2000, running SuSE 10.0 the driver works in windows is bcmwl5.inf, but in Linux it's only works with bcmwl5a.inf through ndiswrapper.
problems occured in this hardware when you tried to connect to internet using wireless : the wireless is turn off from the hardware
solutions: turn on wireless in Windows, then go to Linux, it should show that the hardware is on.
note:i used 2.6.13-15 kernel
installation:
get the latest ndiswrapper here, i used ndiswrapper 1.23
switch user
>su
change to your directory where you download ndiswrapper, then extract it
#tar -xzvf ndiswrapper-1.23.tar.gz
#cd ndiswrapper-1.23
after finished installed ndiswrapper, you should check that ndiswrapper running properly. execute command below and you should 'ndiswrapper' there.
#lsmod | grep ndiswrapper
installed the driver ( bcmwl5a.inf and bcmwl5.sys ). should you don't have it, goto www.linuxant.com driver page and get it. After you get it, you should load the driver.
usage: ndiswrapper-i [driver position]
#ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf
check if it's correct, you should see 'driver installed, hardware present'. if you see hardware not present, then it is possible you are using the wrong driver.
#ndiswrapper -l
Finalize the ndiswrapper setup by writing a configuration for modprobe. This will let ndiswrapper and the Broadcom chip start together at boot time.
#ndiswrapper -m
NOTES: for some system, it is possible to used wi-fi now, just wake up the wireless ( ifup wlan0 )
>>>>extra configuration for SuSE : Network Card
>set configuration name to : wlan0
>set hardware configuration name according to your wireless pci-bus : pci-bus:05:02.0 (example)
>set module name: ndiswrapper
>set options according to your IRQ number: irq=11 (example)
>set dhcp or static ip.
>set device activation: at boot time
restart your networking
#/etc/init.d/network restart
try running KwifiManager
>ALT+F2>kwifimanager
if it's installed correctly, you should see some ap's there.
I originally had tremendous problems with this card, especially on Acer Ferrari 4000. Ndiswrapper was no good, acer_acpi was no good, but then I found on Ubuntu forum that firmware was missing and could be grabbed with bcm43xx-firmwarecutter and all is good after that, very stable.
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 10
Kernel (uname -r):
Distribution:
I have version 1.1 of this wireless card. Be careful to make sure that the ndiswrapper is properly adding itself as an alias, as in my case (RHEL5.1) it did not. I've had to add the alias manually to /etc/modprobe.conf
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