How to set up BCM4318 WiFi card on Acer Notebooks - tutorial
 

Edit: added command at interface config

It took me a long time to figure out how to get my Broadcom 4318 card working under Ubuntu, KUbuntu or XUbuntu on Acer notebooks (mine is Acer Aspire 5000 with turion 64 CPU). Now it seems to simple so I decided to let everyone know it.

First of all you have to make sure that you have got this kind of WiFi card. Give out in terminal the
command. You should see something like that:
If you do see this line or something similar that says BCM4318 this tutorial is for you. You also might want to give out this command:
it should give out something like that:
It can be important when you are visiting this site (this is a very useful source of info):
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...index.php/List

Now what you need to do is to install Ndiswrapper and ndiswrapper utils:
(I used it under XUbuntu 32bits even tho I have got a 64bit CPU)
or you can cimpile Ndiswrapper that worked perfectly under Ubuntu 64bit. Jut follow the instructions:
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...p/Installation

The next step is a little bit in connection with kernel modules. Do not get scared. You do not have to compile anything if you do not want to. All you need to do is to remove the bcm43xx modul by giving out the
command in terminal. You can make sure that it has been removed with this command:
If it doesn't show up you did everything fine.
The next step it to blacklist it so that it will not be loaded when the comp. restarts. All you need to do it to add this line to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file:
By this you disabled this module but you did not remove it so any time you will need it in the future you will be able to use it.
Now we have got ndiswrapper installed and the previous driver removed that did not support that sort of wifi card.
By the way... For those who do not know what is ndiswrapper: ndiswrapper enables you to load you windows driver for you wifi car under linux.

The next step is to obtain the proper driver. If you have got a acer notebook (mine is Acer Aspire 5000) go to this site:
ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/
And select the proper notebook. Mine choice was the aspire 3000-5000.
If you need a 64bit driver go for the 3020-5020 64 bit driver there. That is what I used under Ubuntu 64bit.

if you downloaded the zip file unzip it to a random directory and then navigate to this dir in terminal. Give out these commands:
its output should be:
You have just now installed the driver but it is not loaded yet. You will have to load it now.
do this:
if no errors:
you loaded ndiswrapper kernel module. You can chk out the system log files for errors. There should not be any if there is try another driver or if you are sure that you used the proper one compile indiswrapper for yourself. It is fairly easy.
my output:
now you will have to configure your interface so that yuo can use it:
to chk out which one is your wifi device:
So for me I need to operate with eth1. You might have something like ath0 maybe wifi0 or whatever.
so: Ok... that should be it:
ping google.com

if it works yuhu... everything is ok.

acer tm2480 wireless bcm43xx
 

Hi Vargandis,

just read you HOW-TO on wireless on acer laptop for broadcom chipset. as i stepped through it i got stuck here (i have copied the commands and outputs into a text file for future reference):

command: lspci

output: 0000:0a:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

command: lspci -n

output: 0000:0a:03.0 0280: 14e4:4318 (rev 02)

command: ndiswrapper -l

output: bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present

command: dmesg | grep ndiswrapper

output: [17179591.784000] ndiswrapper version 1.8 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=no)
[17179591.876000] ndiswrapper (import:239): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:'strrchr'
[17179591.876000] ndiswrapper (import:239): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:'MmFreeContiguousMemorySpecifyCache'
[17179591.876000] ndiswrapper (import:239): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:'MmAllocateContiguousMemorySpecifyCache'
[17179591.876000] ndiswrapper (import:239): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:'MmGetPhysicalAddress'
[17179591.876000] ndiswrapper (load_sys_files:218): couldn't prepare driver 'bcmwl5'
[17179591.876000] ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:112): loadndiswrapper failed (65280); check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver'

when you look at where i give the command ndiswrapper -l it outputs bcmwl5 driver present (instead of driver installed) and hardware present.

when you look at dmesg | grep ndiswrapper output it is compoletly different from yours. i don't know how to find the system log and even if did i would not know what to do with the info.

is there any way you can help me? i think i am not far of from getting it working as i seem to have the same chipset as you.

your help is much appreciated
regards
ron

Well, usually it means you have different versions of ndiswrapper module (included in kernel or restricted-modules package in deb-like) and ndiswrapper-utils. I would download ndiswrapper source tarball from developer's site and rebuild it by included instruction (well, why would when I have done exactly this). Then replace ndiswrapper.ko (somewhere in /lib/modules/<kernel version>) and loadndisdriver (in /sbin, I think) with freshly-compiled versions. Should work better.

i am replying now from wireless, i saw a link to this page: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185174 and followed the steps there and it seems to work. red light is flashing (never seen that before) it is a bit on the slow side 11.0 Mbps while signal strength on the other hand is excellent. thanks for your reply anyway.

ron

The bcm43xx driver is limited to 11Mbps. If you need faster, you have to use ndiswrapper.

thanks Hangdog42,

ok, so i am half way there. i check my system when it was booting and it wants load (from the top of my head) ndisdriver: loadndisdriver: loadndisdriver: loading driver loading bcmwl5 failed quiet early in the boot process. then once the system is started up i must issue modprobe bcm43xx to get it to do something. is there anyway i can get this boot information so i can post it properly?

regards
ron

Check the output of the dmesg command and your log files (/var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages). By the way, ndiswrapper and bcm43xx will conflict, so you don't want them loaded at the same time.

This is distro number 3 for my acer aspire 5000 laptop. I think i make have found the issue with the chipset that has been causing so much trouble. I was repeatly having problems with the wireless card (no matter how many wiki's and troubleshooting support docs i found) getting the wireless card to work.
Right now i am running updates through VMware, the only reason it isn't disabling the IRQ or showing avalible networks but not connecting. Now the really interesting thing is i had to add a generic SCSI driver to vmware before it would even work.
The distro i am using right now is backtrack2.
There are two possible conclutions i have come to and if anybody has any input for this please help me.
1) at first thought, Power management seemed to be interfering with the IRQ's, when it was disabled in windows it would partially work until linux tryed to use the device. (booted in vmware) otherwise it would disabled when booted natively in the boot process.

2) Because of the resolution VMware had when i added a SCSI driver i am thinking perhaps it's a propriatry SCSI device only visable to bios. Anybiody who had an acer can tell you there really isn't a way to check the bios to obtain this information. If there is a SCSI does someone know where i can get a kext to fix it?

Welcome to LQ!

May I suggest that you start a new thread about this? It sounds different enough from what was discussed here that it could use its own.

One question I do have is that it isn't clear from your post if Linux is running within VMWare or if it is running on the bare metal.

>
>> netllama @ LinuxQuestions.org wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> This is the message:
>>>
>>> Hi!
>>> I found a thread that you started here regarding your Acer TM2480:
>>> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ghlight=tm2480
>>>
>>> I'm considering purchasing one of these units (to use with Linux, of course), and was wondering how well yours is working? Are there any components (modem, card reader, etc) that you've never tried to use in Linux, or anything that you've tried to use but doesn't work (or work well)?
>>>
>>> thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Hi
>>
>> I am currently working with Mepis 6.0 lts and i needed some fiddling
>> getting the screen resolution right. also had some probs with my
>> wireless. both work fine now. i have never used the built in modem, so i
>> don't know about that one, not really interested either.
>>
>> then i have tried but not fully integrated yet, the latest mepis (6.9 or
>> 7.0?) and both screen and wireless work fine under it. i also use kopete
>> a lot and that one seems to freeze in the new version, but that could be
>> resolved by installing my current version on the new distro release
>> until they fixed bugs
>>
>> hope this was helpful, i en joy my linux laptop under mepis, i have
>> tried ubuntu on it but it just works better with mepis, just fine out of
>> the box
>
> Hi,
> I did purchase a TM-2480, and for the most part things are working,
> however I can't get the wireless to work at all. Can you elaborate on
> which wifi kernel module you're using (ath5k, madwifi, ndiswrapper),
> and what you needed to do to get it working?
>
> thanks
>
>
what os are you using? under the latest mepis (6.9 RCx.x) it works out of the box but that is still in beta, wait for the final release and try that if do not want to play with beta releases. final release should be here soon. i have mine working under mepis 6.0 lts but i do believe i have un- and reinstalled ndiswrapper. find the way (goolge) to properly uninstall it first
to activate my wireles under current mepis (6.0 lts) i have to start a gui proggie called 'wireless assistant' each time i (re)start my computer, click on my avaiable wireless station (i use a static ip network, may be that is why i have to do this) but it takesless than 10 seconds to do this so it no hassle really. it the connects instantly.

hey I like your tutorial and all but how do you navigate to any file through the terminal? I have been trying to install my wireless drivers for my acer aspire 3000 for over 5 hours now. I have been going through many linux / ubuntu forums and no luck..how do i turn mycard back on i tried this "unblock all" and that didn't work and it still says "Hard block yes" i have gone through everything in this other forum but nothing works... here is something im getting in my terminal
can someone please help me with this...i really like Ubuntu and switching back to XP is going to suck..

In general, it is usually a better idea to start a new thread than to dredge up an old one. But with that said, the error message you posted is pretty clear, namely that you apparently haven't installed the firmware that b43 needs. I suspect that the Ubuntu restricted repositories do have firmware packages, so you might want to look there first. If that doesn't work, linuxwireless.org has good instructions.

after a couple of more hours i did it. im starting to understand linux. got the wireless going. now i wanna get rid of the dual boot part.
thank you