Hi. I am a linux n00b and was having problems getting my wireless network card to work with a Dell C640 laptop. I am using Fedora Core 6. I have tried to give as much detail as I can.

Here is what I get when i run lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801CAM IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1420
02:01.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1420
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11a/b/g (rev 03)



I followed the instructions at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/...hp/Installation
I downloaded the bcmwl5a drivers from: http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R76521na.exe


I believe I have downloaded, compiled and installed ndiswrapper correctly.

This is what I get when I run ndiswrapper -l:

bcmwl5a : driver installed
device (14E4:4324) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

This is what I get when I run dmesg | grep ndiswrapper

ndiswrapper version 1.34 loaded (preempt=no,smp=yes)
usbcore: registered new driver ndiswrapper


I am not able to configure the card to connect to my Linksys wireless router. I am broadcasting my ESSID. My ESSID is "wireless"
I am using 128 bit WEP encryption and filtering by MAC address. I have had this card working in a windows machine before and know the MAC filter is setup ok to allow traffic from this card.

Here is what I get when I run: iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.437 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s
RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption key:encryption info emoved by me Security modepen
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.


Here is what iwlist eth01 scan gives me:

eth01 Interface doesn't support scanning.


I tried to manually configure eth01 through Network Configuration GUI. I set the Mode to Auto, Network Name to wireless, Channel, and key.

When I try to activate the card, I get:

Determining IP information for eth1...failed. No link present. Check cable

I also tried to configure the card by using the command:
iwconfig eth1 essid wireless.

When I run iwconfig after this, it shows my ESSID as blank.

I am not sure what to do from here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Check lsmod and see if native bcm43xx is loaded. Will conflict with ndiswrapper so you might have to stop it from loading at boot. Similar thread here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=510131 , no point at the moment trying the firmware route as bcm4309 is still unstable http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices