Broadcom/Belkin Wireless Problems on a HP Pavilion zv6270 Notebook

Ok, like many others out there I’m having trouble getting my wireless up and running on my laptop. Currently I’m running a dual boot system, XP Home and Fedora Core 6 x86_64 (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 #1 SMP Mon Oct 16 14:39:22 EDT 2006 x86_64). Here are my laptop stats:

HP Pavilion zv6270 Notebook
AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor 3500_1.95 GHz (K7)

And my wireless cards:

Belkin PCMCIA Wireless G Notebook Card F5D7010
Driver – BLKWGN.sys (Under Windows)
Driver – RT2500 (Under Linux following ndiswrapper instructions)

Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN Integrated wireless support for Mini PCI IEEE 802.11b/g WLAN
Driver – BCMWL5.sys (Under Windows)
Driver – BCMWL5.sys (Under Linux followed both bcm43xx-fwcutter and the ndiswrapper instructions)

The wrapper shows this:

ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4318) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)
rt2500 : driver installed

Cutters instructions said to put the firmware in /lib/firmware and then something about modprobe. I did that and it doesn’t work either.

I’ve followed pretty much every instruction I could find and still can’t manage to get it working. I’ve actually learned quite a bit, but I guess not enough to overcome this hurdle. Google/Linux has been my friend for about 3 weeks now. At this point I’ve read so many post it’s not even funny. Still I haven’t come across anything that fits my situation aside from lots of people having the same problem on different systems or different builds. You guys know the story. Newb needs help. Any way any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just searched around the web a bit (linux-on-laptops, tuxmobil, various forums), but the zv6270 seems to be quite new and the bcm4318 is listed as unstable and 'work in progress' on the bcm43xx page.

But don't dispair yet

It would be good to know the output of: #lspci -vb
Also any other error messages you might come across, verbatim.

Since you have installed both ndiswrapper and the bcm43xx driver, here's some bad news: both don't like each other very much. How to blacklist the bcm43xx driver: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=462995

And one thing that is quite a widespread problem at least in Ubuntu: ndiswrapper packages are somehow damaged, which is why the need to be compiled from source. Might want to check if that's an issue in Fedora.

If all else fails keep in mind that you can always buy a USB WLAN stick with a chip that is thoroughly supported (also with WPA, which is almost mandatory for your home WLAN, unless you want to set up a VPN [which your university also might use]). In general, it's a good idea to watch out for hardware compatibility before you buy stuff, but I suppose you've read all about that already.

Thanks for the info.

I finally managed to get the integrated Broadcom working. Now I just need to get the PCMCIA Belkin working. I found a few sites that said it's a good card, but most of those say it's plug and play for Mandrake and Ubuntu. There's no mention of it on Fedora.

I actually tried ndiswrapper first, then I tried fwcutter. After giving up for a while I tried the ndiswrapper again. I'm not sure where I went wrong the first 20 times or so, but then after one of the reboots it just started working.

Here are the sites I referenced to get it all working and some semblance of what steps I followed. I'd give you a better idea on the steps I followed if I wasn't so frustrated the entire time I was doing this. I only had a few minutes here and there to work on this until yesterday.

1.Obtained latest ndiswrapper from
a.http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper
2.Obtained latest Broadcom drivers from:
a.http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...index.php/List
b.http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...27348&lang=en#
c.Performed a search of my WinXP load to find the driver files from there also.
3.Followed the guidelines set out in these two sites:
a.http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...p/Installation
b.http://www.ampersand.com/nx6110_fc6/#wireless

That's pretty much the size of it.
After that I updated using yum to get yumex and upgraded everything. My wireless card stopped working again after that. So I used my old kernel to load while I look to figure out what got broken. When I went to log into the new kernel today the Broadcom was working like magic. Actually it's working better than it does in Windows. Now I just have to get the Belkin to work because it's a much better card than the Broadcom.
So I'm off to research PCMCIA wireless cards and getting them to work while I'm home for lunch. I didn't actually see any error messages come up during any of this. Still looking for suggestions...

And thanks again marsm for the ref.

Here is the info you said it would be nice to know...

# lspci -vb
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64

00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64
Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=64
I/O behind bridge: 00009000-00009fff
Memory behind bridge: b0100000-b01fffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000c0000000-00000000cff00000
Capabilities: [44] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping
Capabilities: [b0] #0d [0000]

00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [58] Express Root Port (Slot-) IRQ 0
Capabilities: [80] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable+
Capabilities: [b0] #0d [0000]
Capabilities: [b8] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting

00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at b0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [d0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-

00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at b0001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [d0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-

00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at b0002000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [d0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-

00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 10)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: 66MHz, medium devsel
I/O ports at 8400
Memory at b0003000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [b0] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping

00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller ATI (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
I/O ports at 01f0
I/O ports at 03f4
I/O ports at 0170
I/O ports at 0374
I/O ports at 8410
Capabilities: [70] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-

00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0

00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64
Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=07, sec-latency=64
I/O behind bridge: 0000a000-0000afff
Memory behind bridge: b0200000-b02fffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 50000000-51ffffff

00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
Memory at b0003400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [40] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-

00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc ATI SB400 - AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
Memory at b0003800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [40] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Flags: fast devsel
Capabilities: [80] HyperTransport: Host or Secondary Interface

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
Flags: fast devsel

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
Flags: fast devsel

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
Flags: fast devsel

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, fast Back2Back, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 255, IRQ 10
Memory at c0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable)
I/O ports at 9000
Memory at b0100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

03:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
Memory at b0208000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Memory at b0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

03:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 1355
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
Memory at b0204000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)

03:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 10
Memory at b0209000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Bus: primary=03, secondary=04, subordinate=07, sec-latency=176
Memory window 0: 50000000-51fff000 (prefetchable)
Memory window 1: 52000000-53fff000
I/O window 0: 0000a400-0000a4ff
I/O window 1: 0000a800-0000a8ff
16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

03:04.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
Memory at b0206000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

03:04.4 Class 0805: Texas Instruments PCI6411/6421/6611/6621/7411/7421/7611/7621 Secure Digital Controller
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
Memory at b020a000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Memory at b0208c00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Memory at b0208800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

03:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 3085
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 128, IRQ 10
I/O ports at a000
Memory at b020a400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5005G 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
Subsystem: Belkin Unknown device 701d
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 20
Memory at 52000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

Glad to hear you got it working! It's always good to keep track of which guides provided the best hints so you can come back later (eg, for a reinstall) and hopefully reproduce it.

It would be great if you could put all the essential steps that you took in the HCL. Also try to get it onto pages like linux-on-laptops, tuxmobil and any other 'private' pages that you can find, so people that also buy this notebook can simply search for the model name. It's always advisable to include Distribution, `uname -r` (kernel version) and lspci output.

Have fun with your WLAN

They are working, albeit the Broadcom is working better than the Belkin under Fedora as opposed to the other way around in Windows. The Belkin seems a bit slow and the Broadcom is about normal. I also seem to have ended up with extra Devices under Network. I now have a nameless wifi0 Ethernet port. In addition to the eth0 Broadcom and eth1 Belkin.
Maybe it's normal, I still don't know enough about all the ins and outs of Linux to make more than a semi-educated guess though.

At any rate I'm glad its working even if not as efficiently as I'd like. It just gives me an excuse to learn by trial and error though. You know how it goes.

I'll work on putting together something more detailed the next go round. Thanks for the advice.