Dell wireless WLAN 1450 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI card not recognised

Very linux newbie here with a question on configuring my wireless(and my ethernet but we wont go there right now) card. The card is in a Dell inspiron notebook with a fresh Fedora core 1 install. It is a Dell wireless WLAN 1450 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI card. I dont know the commands in terminal well enough yet to asses the problem . When I try to configure the card in the Network device control menu, it is not recognised. I am trying to make the switch from xp to linux, but I find myself still stuck in the windows world without a network or internet connection in Fedora Core 1. Can anyone help? (newbie language will be very helpful).
THANKS!

Let the computer boot up, then open a terminal screen, pop in your pcmcia card, let the computer beep at you telling you it errored, then type dmesg, you should see a few lines at the end that say unknown card in slot X and hopefully it gives a manufid number like 0x004 or something. then use vi to edit your /etc/pcmcia/config file and add your card in there, using the same format as all the other cards. The tough thing to find out is what chipset to bind it to, like orinoco or smb or whatever. I hope someone else has that card and can tell you what chipset it has.

Linux doesn't recognize may wireless cards from the get-go due to the fact that wireless chipset manufacturers are a bunch of <RADIO EDIT> and won't write linux drivers or release enough info for someone else to write one. However, there are ways to get your wireless card working if your lucky. Open up a console and enter lspci. One of the devices listed should be your wireless card and it will probably show the chipset being used. If you don't understand what you are looking at, post the output of lspci and we'll give you a hand.

I know Dell has a fondness for Broadcom chipsets, and if that is the case then ndiswrapper or linuxant may do the trick.

i am trying to set up my dell to work with knoppix std. I want it to recognize my wireless card which is the dell 1450.

02:03.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4324 (rev 03)


so how do I get this to work on my machine exactly?

You probably want to try ndiswrapper or linuxant . Either one of these provide a way for linux to use the windows drivers. This site claims that the 1450 is compatible with ndiswrapper.

"console" = terminal? If so, I typed "lspci" and it was an unrecognised command. Also, how do I change to root user when in terminal...sorry for the lack of basic knowledge. I wasn't kidding when I said I was a NOOB (god i hate people like me...) Thanks for your help so far.

20 freakin hours later, I'm not so new any more. Got it figured out with ndiswrapper. thanks for the help Hangdog. hasta.

Hello,

I am having the same issue.

1) I downloaded the ndiswrapper and installed it.
2) I downloaded and installed ndiswrapper.
3) I ran the ndiswrapper against the CD that came with my system titled DRIVERS AND UTILITIES

# find /mnt/cdrom -name *.inf
/mnt/cdrom/files/r58028/a01/bcmsmwdm.inf
/mnt/cdrom/files/r66674/a02/bcmsmwdm.inf

# ls -l /mnt/cdrom/files/r58028/a01/bcmsmwdm.inf
r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 54644 Feb 26 2003 /mnt/cdrom/files/r58028/a01/bcmsmwdm.inf

# ls -l /mnt/cdrom/files/r66674/a02/bcmsmwdm.inf
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 54522 Sep 12 2003 /mnt/cdrom/files/r66674/a02/bcmsmwdm.inf

Since they were the same name and different dates I assumed that these were the same driver and picked the most recent one.

ndiswrapper -i /mnt/cdrom/files/r66674/a02/bcmsmwdm.inf

4) I ran ndiswrapper -k
# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmsmwdm hardware present,fuzzy

5) Loaded the module
# modprobe ndiswrapper

6) Checked the dmesg
dmesg

last line of output
ndiswrapper (load_driver:1829): Unable to prepare driver

So what's wrong? Did I use the wrong driver.

How do I get this out of the kernel and try the other driver?

Since they were the same name and different dates I assumed that these were the same driver and picked the most recent one.

That may be a mistaken assumption. What you should do is open a console and look at the output of lspci to find out what chipset you are running. From the .inf files you posted, it looks like Broadcom, but it never hurts to check. Once you know the chipset, go to the ndiswrapper supported chipset page and they should point you to the proper drivers. There can be a number of .inf files on a CD, so it is possible that the ones you've used are not the real drivers.

shinobi --

just so you know, when trying to do a driver reassign in the windows environment on my dell 9100 series, the drivers that dell sent me on the disks (DRIVERS AND UTILITIES) with the comp were for a different device. The generic broadcom driver on the broadcom page is the only one that got my card workin right. so dont rely on the so called support cd from dell which supports practically nothing.

Thanks for the info, here is the output from

# lspci

Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11a/b/g (rev 03

So looks like a Broadcom.


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go to the ndiswrapper supported chipset page and they should point you to the proper drivers
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I am going to assume that you mean on Broadcoms website. If I am mistaken let me know.

Sorry about the doublepost. The previous message on this thread was so old I wondered whether my post would be seen (that was before I noticed a link to view ALL new posts).

By the way how are you making those lines around your quote. Is there some help or tutorial for this site?

Thanks Hangdog

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The generic broadcom driver on the broadcom page is the only one that got my card workin right. so dont rely on the so called support cd from dell which supports practically nothing.
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Thanks Pitt68 ...

02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11a/b/g (rev 03)

Ok so what does this mean. Somewhere I was getting BCM1450. Oh I remember it was from the Dell Web Site when I input my Service Tag and searched for system info on their site, however, the lspci shows BCM4309.

The Broadcom seems to not have drivers below 4401. Any Ideas as to where I can download an appropriate driver?

hi im having the same problem as a few in here, sorta. when following some of the above steps, the output of

ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers
bcmw15 hardware not present

lspci has a line
network controller BRoadcom Corporation: unknown device 4325 (rev 02)


and modprobe ndiswrapper and then dmesg has a line
ndiswrapper: driver bcmw15.sys (Broadcom 06/13/2003, 3.20.23.0) added


any ideas what my problem is here?

Shinobi - I did mean the ndiswrapper site. They've changed it a bit recenty, however there is a list of supported cards here
and if you CTRL-F the page for 4309, you'll find several Dell cards using that chipset with links to the drivers.

rjcrews - You probably need to visit the ndiswrapper supported cards page and make sure that you have the
right Windows drivers. The error you're seeing usually happens when the Windows driver and ndiswrapper aren't
on speaking terms.

Hi All

I have got laptop Dell Latitude D600 , with two operating system, XP SP2, and Fedora core 1 on two different partitions.

Wireless type : Dell wireless WLAN 1450 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI card . I tried to follow the instruction to configure it (http://www.linuxelectrons.com/articl...960&mode=print ) :

1- Downloaded the ndiswrapper-0.10.tar.gz. I beleive this is the right version for the linux that I have got!! http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/



2- I used: tar zxvf ndiswrapper-0.10.tar.gz ..............I lwas login as root

3- result was : ndiswrapper-0.10

4- till this stage I was fine

5- ./configure or make install- -------To compile it , gave me error message. long message the last line was: make:*** [wrapper.o] Error 1.

what should I do?

Please any help will be really appreciate it.

Thanks