I am running Fedora Core 1 and I am trying to get my Broadcom onboard wireless networking to work. I got ndiswrapper and have done the following:
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
$ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 present
$modprobe ndiswrapper

That all works without error. Then i try using dmesg to see my wlan0 info and upon running dmesg the only information i get that deals with ndiswrapper or wlan0 is this:

$dmesg |grep wlan0
<nothing>
$dmesg |grep ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper version 0.6 loaded

if i try to do iwconfig with no parameters i get this:
$iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions
eth0 no wireless extensions

eth0 is my cabled connection to the router. So basically my problem is that wlan0 somehow doesn't show up or become enabled. I have wireless capability in my kernel. Also in /etc/modules.conf i have this "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper". Does anyone know what i'm missing or have done wrong?

Have you been through the the ndiswrapper FAQ? There are a number of situations that might result in not getting wlan0 to show.

I have been through the FAQ, the only thing I can think of on that FAQ that may be the problem is if i have to send my wlan an initial something to turn it on. If this is the case, does anyone know how to do that for broadcom wireless? Thanks

ndiswrapper -m # this adds an alias for wlan0 & ndiswrapper in /etc/modules.conf

then

modprobe ndiswrapper

after you modprobe ndiswrapper if the lights on your card do not turn on.. run the following

loadndisdriver bcmwl5

this along with dmesg should give you some sort of idea of whats going wrong.