Old Laptop: Slackware 13.37 and WPC54GS v 1.1 PCMCIA wireless card
 

Hello, I am currently trying to learn Linux (today is actually my first day) with a new installation of Slackware 13.37 on my old Toshiba Laptop. I am having trouble with my PCMCIA card wireless adapter, a WPC54GS v 1.1 and I've been through a lot of forums, but can't get it to work so far.

Originally,
# iwconfig wlan0
in the response there was "Tx-Power=0 dBm"

so I found this tutorial and I updated the firmware

then I got "Tx-Power=20 dBm" so I assumed it was working and this tutorial was enough to get a previous forum poster a working wireless. Unfortunately for me, this isn't enough.

# iwlist wpa0 scan
wlan0 No scan results

I keep getting this response and I know there is a wireless network in range because I'm using it on my other computers.

Also, from other forum entries, Slackware now has the drivers for the broadcom chipset in native support. Either way, after it didn't work I did the installation of the driver with ndiswrapper and I get the appropriate "driver installed" "device present" response, and I still get the "No scan results" afterward.

Any ideas to get me some scan results? Or connecting to my wireless network of choice? (Typing in the ESSID manually doesn't work either.)

It sounds like your card is recognized. What I suggest is installing Wicd, which is a GUI for easy wifi connections. It isn't included on a default install of Slack, but if you put in your Slackware install disc, you'll find the package for it in /extra. Just do installpkg packagename.tgz and it will install. May need a reboot to load the daemon (not 100% sure on this). After that, wicd should handle everything nicely for you.

wicd didn't work
 

I installed wicd from the slackware cd, but that didn't do it. I think this error in the startx response has something to do with the wireless card not working.

ERROR:dbus.connection:Exception in handler for D-Bus signal:
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 214, in maybe_handle_message self._handler(*args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/blueman/plugins/config/File.py", line 64, in on_value_changed in self.plugin().section == section:
AttributeError: 'NoneType" object has not attribute 'section'

Right now, the wicd is not showing in the tray. When I first ran wicd, I got different daemon errors along with dbus erros, but then realized I forgot to restart. After restart the daemon is connecting fine, but the errors above are showing.

Sorry for the previous "too quick" reply.

I got the error messages to go away, it might have been the "chmod -x" being used after a reinstall.

In short, Wicd gives me a nice GUI interface, but has the same information: "No wireless networks found." It can't find my home wireless network, even if I put in the ESSID manually, looking for a "hidden network" in Wicd. My desktop sees 5 wireless networks in the area and Wicd on my laptop sees none.

Also, in Wicd, the "Create an Ad-Hock Network" doesn't seem to be doing anything. The command line response says "Starting the Ad-Hoc Network Creation Process..." but then nothing happens.

I think there is still some kind of problem even though the firmware gets "Tx-Power= 20dBm", something is still missing.

Any recommendations out there?

This may be a stupid question, but does your laptop have an On/Off button or key combination for the wifi card? If your card is turned off, that would cause it to be recognized but still not show any wifi networks.

Nope, this is an pretty ordinary PCMCIA card with no switches on it. My laptop is a dual boot, so I just booted up Windows and the card still works in Windows just fine.

I'm still getting the 20 dBm of power to it (or from it) in Slackware, it just can't see any networks. I'll keep working at it.

Slackware 13.37 differs from previous versions of Slackware in that /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia is not set as executable by default. This needs to be executable so that the pcmcia bus is probed at boot.
Does your card appear in 'lspcmcia'?

When I create an Ad-Hoc network with the Slackware command line, it shows up on another computer's wifi as "Other Network", but when I type in the SSID to connect on that computer, it can't connect. So at this point, basically the card has power, but nothing in the ways of tangible communication.

I think your card should be supported by the b43 driver. Does 'lsmod | grep b43' return anything?
If not, then try 'modprobe b43' and check 'dmesg | tail' for any informative error messages.

@allend

when I do "lspcmcia" it responds:

Socket 0 Bridge: [yenta_cardbus] (bus ID: 0000:01:0b.0)
CardBus card -- see "lspci" for more information

when I do "lspci" (as I have previously used exclusively) it responds with a bunch of devices and the final line is:

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

I have the correct firmware (wl version 3.130.20.0) and driver (b43legacy) for this chipset installed. I have also tried another firmware and driver combo since the tutorial has conflicting information about which ones to use for my chipset (4306 rev3). Neither have worked so far.

If my device shows up in lspci, do I need to get it to show up in lspcmcia too?

Here is the tutorial I have been using:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...entioned_above

At the top in the table it shows "BCM4306/3" as taking b43, but at the bottom it recommends b43legacy for "BCM4306 cards with a 80211 core revision of 4 or less". I have tried both along the way. Right now, the b43legacy is the driver/firmware combo installed.

lsmod | grep bc43
(returns nothing)
modprobe b43
(returns nothing)
modprobe b43legacy
(returns nothing)
dmesg | tail
(returns a lot of stuff with "interrupt_thread" and other things, but nothing explicitly says "error" or "ERROR")

on the modprobes, if I mistype the driver, such as b43Legacy (caps L), then it returns: "FATAL: Module b43Legacy not found.

Have you seen my post #7?

I apologise for the typos in my post #9 that I have corrected.

I suspect that the kernel module that drives your card is not being loaded. You can check this with 'lsmod | grep b43'.

Try using modprobe with the -v option, i.e. 'modprobe -v b43', to get further output.

From 'modinfo b43'
From 'modinfo b43legacy'
So the two drivers service earlier and later revisions. According to this http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Broadcom_43xx , it is the b43 driver that works with the Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03).

If the card is showing in 'lspci', then it appears that the card is being recognised. Your card is being recognised on the pcmcia bus.

Your 'lspci' does not show any [Vendor:ProductID]. Does it show this information if you increase verbosity with 'lspci -v'?

In regards to post #7, I went ahead and input the command: chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia (but I don't know if that is enough)

In my boot up response I do see:

Starting PCMCIA service:
<Probing for PCIC: edit /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia>

but I don't see anything else on PCMCIA

Right now on boot up, it seems to be b43 or b43legacy (or both) is active. So far I have switched between the two and using both (using modprobe) and none gives me scan results for "iwlist wlan0 scan" but they both give me a nice looking response to "iwconfig wlan0" unless both are removed using modprobe -r and then I get "No Such Device".

(This is the response when b43legacy is loaded using modprobe.)

lsmod | grep b43legacy
b43legacy 103552 0
ssb 40012 2 b43,b43legacy
mac80211 181473 2 b43,b43legacy
cfg80211 122542 3 b43,b43legacy,mac80211


lsmod | grep b43
b43 159435 0
b43legacy 103552 0
ssb 40012 2 b43legacy,b43
mmc_core 57264 2 b43,ssb
pcmcia 32618 2 b43,ssb
mac80211 181473 2 b43legacy,b43
cfg80211 122542 32 b43legacy,b43,mac80211


Also, when I shut down it does return "Shutting down PCMCIA services"

When b43legacy is the only driver loaded using modprobe and modprobe -r:

lspci -v
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Linksys WPC54G v1 / WPC54GS v1 802.11g Wireless-G Notebook Adapter
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 11
Memory at 40000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8k]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Kernel modules: ssb

When b43 is the only driver loaded or both b43 and b43legacy are loaded:

lspci -v
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Linksys WPC54G v1 / WPC54GS v1 802.11g Wireless-G Notebook Adapter
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at 40000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8k]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
Kernel modules: ssb


After the first firmware upgrade, I think that's when it started being recognized and it's when it started getting tx-power= 20 dBm insead of tx-power= 0 dBm. That's when I thought it would work, but I have still not been able to connect to a network or get any scan results.