I need an ndsiwrapper explaination suitible for an idiot such as myself
 

So,
After using a very inclusive debian based distro that had everything pre-built for me,(namely Mepis) I decided to try something new, that I could perhaps learn from, and installed debian etch. I have learned alot in the process, installing many things on my own, and getting everything up and running just the way I like it.
However, I am stuck on this ndiswrapper thing, I really need an explaination suitable to a 10 year old child, or old blind lady.
I cannot seem to get my wireless working without it (built-in mini dell 1390{#lspci says: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)}) but I am at a total loss as how to install the drivers to work with it. Is there perhaps a "package" that can be downloaded that installs the needed drivers? Or an external tutorial that goes step-by-step?
Anyone wanna help a girl out? Any advice would be appreciated at this point. I really need my wifi up and running....
Thanks!

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=31926
It will be probably almost the same.

This is a nice guide how to do it in Ubuntu.
It is not done with a package. And this is one of the only apps that I install from source because build in versions in the distro always get me in trouble.

If I understand it correctly, NDISWrapper is simply a "compatibility layer" set up to translate a Windows driver interface to the right Linux code. It is loosely analogous to what WINE does to run Windows apps

Your understanding is correct (at least it matches my own).

The tutorial in the previous post is excellent, I used it myself to get my Broadcom-card working under Slackware.

You should be aware, however, that not all broadcom windows drivers work under ndiswrapper. The drivers supplied with Dell machines used to not work with ndiswrapper, and neither did the ones supplied with my Asus. I downloaded drivers from the Acer website and they worked.

By far the best bit of help on ndiswrapper I've seen: http://www.linuxforums.org/network/w...and_linux.html

Newbie & Wifi problem - won't restart on reboot.
 

Hi, I have followed the instructions in the above post and managed to get my 3COM wifi dongle up and running last night - great! Switching on again this morning - no wifi - groan. Got it going again by using the last two bits of the install:

Can somebody tell me how to ensure it comes up automatically each time I boot up? Feel I must be missing something here. Many thanks

If you haven't done so already, in your modules.rc, uncomment or add the line

If you don't, it will fail to load the ndiswrapper module on startup, and you will have to do it manually with ndiswrapper.

Hope this helps.

[QUOTE=wauwha;2881927]If you haven't done so already, in your modules.rc, uncomment or add the line

[Snip]
/QUOTE]

Wauwha, Thanks. This would seem to be the answer but as a very Newbiw I have no idea where or what modules.rc is or can be found! Can you be specific?

Many thanks.

I'm sorry. Not only was i unspecific, I also mistyped the name of the file you need to edit. On my Slackware system the file is

/etc/rc.d/rc.modules

I'm afraid, however, that the location as well as the name of the file depends on your distribution. You can do a

locate rc.modules

(first do a locate -u as root to make a locate database)

This will find the file if it's name is rc.modules on your distro.
rc.modules is one of your startup scripts. I think these would always be somewhere under /etc.
If none of this works, try posting the name of your distro, someone might be able to tell you the exact location.