Dell Inspiron 1521 sound and wifi

hosler · 09-07-2007, 09:32 AM

Has anyone been able to get sound and wifi working on this laptop? If so, how?

alex.archip · 09-08-2007, 03:12 AM

What wifi card do you have on your laptop?

If it is an intel card, have you tried installing the ipw**** (**** - card model)? I only had dell laptops so far:
- a Latitude 110L with Broadcom wifi card - generated the kernel module using ndiswrapper
- a Latitude D820 with Intel 3945 - I use ipw3945 modules.

In both cases I use wpa_supplicant for WPA/WPA2 based wireless networks.

hosler · 09-09-2007, 02:41 PM

Yeah I have a broadcom. I tried using ndiswraper, but didnt work. ill just wait for a working kernel module.

alex.archip · 09-09-2007, 03:41 PM

For my Latitude 110L - the notebook with the Broadcom wireless chipset - I successfully installed the wifi card after I using both the .inf and .sys files of the windows driver. I'll look into it a bit more and I'll reply when I have more info.

doceyes · 09-17-2007, 10:14 PM

the dell 1505 wireless card works natively with SimplyMepis 6.9.85beta4_64 on my inspiron 1521; though sound is still a problem.

sataylor56 · 10-02-2007, 01:22 PM

To get the wireless working I downloaded the file R151519.EXE from Dell.
I ran it on a Windows machine to extract the files. I copied the bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys files to my 1521 and then used ndiswrapper to load the .inf file. The wireless function came up right away though there is a bug that doesn't allow the signal strength to be displayed.

I still haven't been able to get the sound working.

hosler · 10-02-2007, 07:50 PM

To get sound working download the latest alsa drivers. works for me now

Kahless · 10-07-2007, 12:14 AM

to use the native network drive, use bcm43xx-fwcutter

Kahless · 10-07-2007, 12:14 AM

to use the native network driver, use bcm43xx-fwcutter

sataylor56 · 10-08-2007, 10:03 AM

I did finally get my sound working on my Dell 1521 by following these instructions at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto.
I am running Kubuntu 7.04 with the 2.6.20-15-generic kernel. After I got the sound working I updated to the 2.6.20-16-generic and it broke my sound again. I suppose I could recompile ALSA but for now I am just going to keep running the older kernel. This Dell sound stuff seems to be very picky and now that I have it working, I don't want to mess with it.