From what I can tell, the driver for the Broadcom wireless interface is installed correctly. It does recognize it and reports it's MAC address just fine. The problem is that I can't activate it. I'm sure it has to do with that goofy switch on the front of the computer that turns the wireless on and off. Anyone have any success with this?

Distro?

Do you have the firmware installed properly? Most new distros come with a driver, but you still need to use a firmware cutter to get the card to work.

I'm using CentOS 5.1. Could you please tell me more about how to do what I need to do with my firmware? I noticed in my startup the following line:

"bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed"

So it sounds your advice is spot on, but I've not a clue as to how to fix it!

Sorry took me so long. If you haven't figured this out, yet, I hope this helps.

I believe CentOS is RPM based, so you'd be looking for the file bcm43xx-fwcutter-006-1.el5.kb.src.rpm or something similar. Try here http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat....i386.rpm.html

I know using the fwcutter and the file wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o got my card working on Kubunutu.

CentOS is one of the few distros I haven't tried, so not sure what the procedure is. My guess is to run the fwcutter and got through the restricted hardware setup if it has it and point the card toward the wl_apsta file. That's how it works in Kubuntu and other distros I've tried.

I would just install CentOS and give it a try, but my card with the Broadcom chip up and died on me.

hmmmm
another way to get the 2 files you need is to download the wireless driver .exe from the manufactorers site and use cabextract to get it opened up.
then use ndiswrapper to install the files.