Hey Guys,
Well I wont say that I am a newbie but am definitely new to this forum. Although previuosly I had a lot of help from this forum but never registered; so spare me if I am asking the same question that is being asked millions of times before.
Now on to the problem ... am using fedora core 6, have a bcm4318 chipset broadcom wireless card on amd turion 64 gateway laptop. I am not using Fedora core kernel and have downloaded and compiled Linux Kernel 2.6.19.2 on my machine. As expected, wireless wasnt working. So I installed fwcutter and extracted firmware from .sys file and did all what the "howto" says ! And to my surprise it started working in the first try. I was happy but not for long !! The problem I face is that the card is acting very very strange ... it works ... then goes down .. then again starts working .. then again goes down and so on. When it goes down, I sometimes deactivate and activate using system-config-network interface and it again starts working, but after sometime again goes off. The most funny part is that when it is dead and I cannot access anything, if I move my laptop from that spot and take it somewhere else it starts working !!! and again after two minutes goes down ! I looked for dmesg and what I found was that there was some problem with soft switch of wireless card or something, but I couldnt understand what exactly was causing this problem.
So linux gurus ... any suggestions ??? Shall I try ndiswrapper ??? shall I try reinstalling fxcutter ??? any other package that can resolve this ??? or shall I keep using windows for wireless (beleive me, I dont wanna do this !).
I am just about to give it up ! any help will be appreciated !
Khan.

Welcome to LQ!

The 4318 doesn't work particularly well with bcm43xx, so if I were in your shoes, I'd give ndiswrapper a go. The downside is that Fedora is a rather ndsiwrapper unfriendly distro, so you may need to investigate kernels with 16K stacks. Also, are you running 32 or 64 bit? The issue here is that the Windows driver you pick MUST match the OS.

I'm going to say this one last time (sorry no offense to you) but the bcm43xx kernel module does not work well with the broadcom 4318 chipsets. Blacklist the bcm43xx module and use ndiswrapper.

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

@hangdog42
thanks man ! I am using 64 bit Fedora Core 6. Well things arent chaning in its perspective so I am moving on to ndiswrapper. Lets give it a shot and see what happens ... if still wont work I think I am gonna switch to Ubuntu.
@Lenard
No offense taken man but still thanks for the info. This is what I thought. This is acting as weird as it could. I am gonna give ndiswrapper a shot !

Since your 64-bit you will not have the 16k stack problem (good for you). But as Hangdog42 suggests get/use the 64-bit Windows driver, the 32-bit does not work with the 64-bit OS and built ndiswrapper kernel module.

The installation guide at the ndiswrapper site is really goog, just follow the advice. After all it is not that hard to do, you do need the kernel-devel rpm package installed for your kernel to build ndiswrapper. If you need it run as root;

yum install kernel-devel.x86_64

FYI: I have answered and explained this bcm43xx issue a number of times, I just get a little tired of it at times is all.

I don't know why, but this reminded me of a funny Cal Ripken story. When he was in the middle of his consecutive game streak, Kirby Puckett was at second base chatting with Ripken about the streak and made the comment "Only five more years and you get to sit down".

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.............

@Lenard
Yeah man ! I have the compiled Vinilla Kernel so I think I dont need to install the kernel-devel package. I have all the symlinks in place and they are working pretty ok.
Just about to try ndiswrapper. Fingers crossed

@hangdog
I just hope my wireless works before 5 years

@khanrockz

Which vanilla kernel??? (just curious) The only thing you need to watch out for is getting the 64-bit Windows driver for the 64-bit OS.

@Lenard
By "Vinilla" I meant I downloaded the kernel manually from kernel.org and compiled it, am not using the Fedora Core distro kernel.

I download and build my own from kernel.org also, it is the only way to go. This way you know for sure your hardware is supported.

I am working with the same problem. I have a x86_64 system. My progress so far is that
1) I have found that it is nessary to update the kernel to 2.6.19 the download of FC6 is 2.6.18. With the updated kernel I can use the ndiswrapper 1.37 if I have installed the ndiswrapper -kfmld **** -file
2)The MS-driver bcml5.inf does not work for 64 bit system .
3) i am now looking for a driver in a 64-bit system. Any idea?

Check the website of your card manufacturer and see if they have a 64 bit driver. You also might check the ndiswrapper wiki and see if there are any suggestions there.