Hi,

I am running openSuse 11.1 64 bit on my hp pavilion dv6458se; and am unable to get my Broadcom wireless card to work.

i tried reading a few forums, but they all start when 'lspci' recognizes the card.

My problem is that 'lspci' does not show any 'Broadcom' card.

Any pointers?

I have given below the output of 'lspci' for your reference.

linux-nu80:/home/Copain # lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51 [Geforce 6150 Go] (rev a2)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PMU (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev f1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev f1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
07:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
07:05.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
07:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 0a)
07:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 05)
07:05.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)


Any help would be gr8ly appreciated.

Thanks for your help in advance.

I would say to see if you can plug your laptop into the web with Ethernet. Then using YaST, type in madwifi or broadcom to see if the correct drivers don't install themselves.

You may have to add testing or rawhide repositories (or enable them) in order to find the right driver. Obviously, back up your data first !!

There is also another product out there called a wireless Ethernet bridge, which does exactly what it says. It has Ethernet on one end and an antenna on the other.

Sometimes the best way to deal with this is to get a friend or yourself with Internet to download a few live CDs from other distributions such as Fedora 12, or Mandriva or Simply Mepis (test mouse) and see if they don't find your wireless. I had to switch from SuSE 10x to Fedora because the sound alsa would not work with my laptop.

This is why people always are switching distros with Linux all of the time. It is that some codec, function or hardware works better with something else. Unlike M$ or even OS-X, you have.... choices with Linux.

** OS-X isn't bad though, far from it. **

I'm not too sure about this, but if you use a DVD-RW or CD-RW instead of a read only disc, you might be able to do some optimization on the live disc before making the decision to install.

If another distro has no hardware issues, it is the path of least resistance to switch to that other distribution. I usually test at least 2 or 3 distros when I put Linux on a computer before settling on a final choice.

Don't forget to try out PC-BSD 8.0 or Open Solaris. They too have live media and might be a good fit for your machine if some of the other Linux distros don't fit. These are both excellent operating systems.

One other thing, if you do decide to install a distro from the live CD, it may be better to go ahead and download the DVD for that exact same distro because the live CD will only give you a stripped down version of Linux. You can enable online sources to get additional features, but that takes a while.

One of the nice things about Fedora 12 is that you have the option to encrypt the hard drive partition just by checking a box and entering a password. This should be very complex, strong and easy to remember because it CAN'T ever be changed IMHO. Fedora 12 even works with my wireless all in one HP printer using wireless.

While SuSE is one of the better distros, it does seem to have a few more hardware problems and YaST seems to break easily. I'd say try Fedora 12 first, then Simply Mepis then Mandriva (but not Metisse) then the UNIX's that I mentioned.

Don't forget to test the sound, peripherals (keyboard mouse screen), !!! PRINTERS !!! and any other hardware like webcams external drives USB etc as part of the live CD test. This is important.

Let me know how it all works out.

You might try running "sudo /sbin/update-pciids". It may update the pci database with newer entries. Another option is updating your kernel or updating to openSuSE 11.2. I did the later before openSuSE 11.2 was released so the Atheros wireless device would work in my netbook.

However, not having even an unknown entry in the lspci results doesn't sound good. If it is an onboard device try "lsusb" as well.

Also, examine your /var/log/boot.msg boot log. See what information if any is logged about your device. Your kernel should see something, but not know what it is.

Check for a wireless disable switch. I've never heard of one totally disabling the device, but I don't want to assume anything.

If you have a USB external wireless or a PCMCIA wireless card, it wouldn't hurt to try those either.

Regardless of whatever laptop you have, I'm sure that some Live disc of Linux will be able to work with your hardware. That is the distro that you should use. Still, try to get SuSE online with Ethernet to see if its updates include the wireless driver.

Thanks a lot ppl!

Will check on these suggestions soon and let you know how far I went. Right now caught up with a lot of office