HP Pavilion ze5620us Laptop Wireless "Firmware Missing" Error
 

I have a Broadcom BCM94306MP wireless card built into the laptop. The wireless worked fine when this computer had XP on it, since I put Ubuntu 10.10 on it, the wireless gives me an error message that states: "Device Not Ready (Firmware Missing)". I am new-ish to linux and would appeciate any help.
Thanks in advance,
Cliff

You need to get the firmware. It's like in the repos. If you open Synaptic and go to Settings-->Repositories-->Ubuntu and enable "Proprietary Drivers . . ." you might find it there.

I tried searching Broadcom and could not find the model number you listed for either Windows or Linux. Broadcom has only within the past year released Linux firmware. Here's their Linux page:

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

Hmmm... that model number is what is printed on the bottom of the Laptop. There is another number written underneath it though, 4324A-BRCM1005.
In Synaptic the Proprietary Drivers is already enabled.
~Cliff

You can run "lspci" from the command line. It should report what type of wireless chip you have.

Here's what my wireless chip reports in the output of lspci:

Here's what I get:
00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

The page you listed's lowest model number is 4311, do you know where I can get a driver for a 4306?
~Cliff

I have no way of testing it, but this page might help.

Another possibility might be to try ndiswrapper, a utility to "wrap" Windows drivers so that they can talk to Linux. I tried it twice with an old Linksys PCMCIA card. It worked flawlessly with Slackware 10.x and not with Slackware 12.x, both times on the same Dell Inspiron 6000.

Hmm, Interesting, in the ndiswrappers there is a report of it working on my card. I assume this is kinda' like WINE, although for drivers only?

That's an interesting analogy. In both cases, the packages enable Windows stuff to talk to Linux, so I think it could hold up, at least on a meta level.

I installed the b43-fwcutter per this page's instructions, linked from the first link you gave above. I then went to the "Additional Drivers" to activate it. This returned with an error that said to see the log file that is attached. Do you have any idea what happened here? I don't.
~ClIff

Sorry about being so late responding to this, I've been away from the Internet. :-( Anyway, I have no idea what I just did, but the wireless is now working. Thanks for all your help here.
~Cliff