Greetings to anyone reading this.

I am running an H-P ze4500 series computer with an integrated Broadcom 94306 802.11g adapter. With the help of several other discussions on this site, I've managed to put together a step-by-step guide to making it work. The heart of it comes from roguefalcon at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/125571

Given my own frustration at doing this, I thought it might be helpful to others. I'm just a newbie, so if I've gotten anything wrong here, I apologize; but it worked for me...

Part 1 – Install Kernel Sources (I had no idea how to do this).
1. Go to the Mandrake Control Center (under Configuration -> Configure your computer.
2. Click on Software Management and then on the green plus sign.
3. On the screen that comes up, sort “All packages, by group.”
4. Under System -> Kernel, find the files for your Kernel (I use 2.4.22.10) and click Install.

Part 2 – Download the drivers from the H-P website.
5. @ hp.com, go to Support and Drivers.
6. Click on Notebook and Tablet PCs
7. Click on Notebook PCs
8. Find you series and model number.
9. After you get to the page with your computer, click on Software and Driver Downloads.
10. Click on Windows XP.
11. Go down to the Driver-Network section and click on Broadcom 802.11b and 802.11g 12. Network Adapters Driver for Windows XP.
13. Once you download the drivers, run the executable in a convenient folder.

Part 3 – Get ndiswrapper 0.4
14. Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ and get the file.

Part 4 – Compile ndiswrapper.
15. Enter the following commands in order
16. tar zxvf ndiswrapper.tar.gz
17. cd ndiswrapper
18. make
19. insmod driver/ndiswrapper.o
20. cd utils
21. make
22. cp loadndisdriver /sbin/. (Note—if “loadndisdriver” doesn't work, try “loaddriver” instead.)
23. lspci -n (you can skip this if you know that, for Broadcom, the vendor is 14e4 and the device is 4320)

Part 5 – Load the Drivers
24. Go back to the folder with the Broadcom drivers and type
25. loadndisdriver 14e4 4320 bcmwl5.sys bcmwl5.inf


Part 6 – Create a script to set the adapter
26. vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
27. Put the following lines into the script:
# Broadcom Corporation|BCM94306 802.11g
# These settings are from the way I configured my wireless router
DEVICE=wlan0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
onBOOT=yes
TYPE=wireless
ESSID=Magellan
KEY=<if you use a key enter it here>
CHANNEL=6
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1

Part 7 – Activate the card
Type in the following commands
28. iwconfig
29. iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
30. iwconfig wlan0 key <if you use a key, enter it here>
31. iwconfig wlan0 essid <enter your router's name>
32. ifup eth1
33. ifconfig (make sure the card is listed)
34.ping 198.168.1.1
[NOTE—if you don't have iwconfig, go to http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/contrib/ and download wireless_tools.26.tar.gz; once you install this package, you'll be able to run the above commands.]

IT SHOULD WORK.

I took the script given by another poster to make the drivers load on reboot.

In the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local, add the following:
ifdown wlan0
rmmod ndiswrapper
insmod /root/ndiswrapper/driver/ndiswrapper.o (You can put the ndiswrapper most anywhere you want, just make sure the reference is accurate.)
loadndisdriver 14e4 4320 /root/broadcom/bcmwl5.sys /root/broadcom/bcmwl5.inf
ifup wlan0

CURRENTLY, I CAN'T GET THE LAST COMMAND TO WORK, SO I HAVE TO TYPE IT IN MANUALLY AFTER REBOOT, BUT I'M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT I DID WRONG.

Good luck to you.

I found your post extremely helpfull. I finally have wireless working on my presario 2100 under Mandrake 10. I used the ndiswrapper rpm instead of installing the source but found your information essential.

Thanks

Brian.

Hello. I just got ndiswrapper-0.6 installed on Mandrake 10.0, and when I tried to run
/usr/local/bin/loadndisdriver 8086 1043 w70n51.sys w70n51.inf for my Intel Pro Wireless 2100 card, I got a:

Usage: /usr/local/bin/loadndisdriver [-a] [driver]

When I tried
/usr/local/bin/loadndisdriver w70n51.sys

I got a:
/etc/ndiswrapper does not exist.

Did the usage of this loadndisdriver change at some point? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks a lot!

Si Chen

you might check to see if they've updated anything with 0.6. the original instructions used 0.4; so i suppose it's possible that a new syntax is needed for the new version. unfortunately, i haven't kept up to date with the latest ndiswrapper; but i would check the documentation that comes with the latest version and just see if the syntax of the command has changed (i.e., the options after the command need to be placed in a different order).

sorry i couldn't be of more help.

Thanks for your comments.

I got more of it working with some help from the ndiswrapper mailing list. ndiswrapper-0.6 has a Makefile from the ndiswrapper-0.6 directory that will take care of all the installation and file copying with a "make install." It was important to remove the old version 0.4 of ndiswrapper from my Mandrake installation at /lib/modules/2.6.3-4mdk/kernel/3rdparty/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko.gz. After the make install, all I had to do was to go to my directory with all the windows driver files and do a "ndiswrapper -i w70n51.inf" and the driver was installed.

All in all, it seems the newer version has made the set up much simpler.

I then changed my ifcfg-wlan0 based on your suggestion as well, putting in my key:
DEVICE=wlan0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=wireless
ESSID=linksys
KEY=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
CHANNEL=6
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1

I did these commands:
modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig
ifup wlan0

And my wlan0 has an IP address which is valid. I ran an ifconfig and got an inet addr for wlan0 of 192.168.1.103.

But here is the thing: I can't use this IP address to access the internet or ping or telnet any of the other computers on my network. I did a "service network restart" and it brought up both eth0 and wlan0 interfaces, but still no ability to access the network. I get "Destination Host Unreachable" and "Connection refused errors." The IP address I have is within my firewall. Do you know why this might be?

I feel like I'm almost pass the goal line now...

Thanks,

Si Chen

I also tried to install the .6 ndiswrapper and went back to the .4 version after getting similar results. I think it's a kernel issue. The mandrake 2.6 binary kernels have the .4 driver installed. The .6 package installs the the driver in a different place (/lib/modules/2.6.3-xmdk/kernel/misc/). I tried removing the old one. I tried moving the new one to the old place. In the end, the adapter did not work. iwconfig never showed a valid wlan device even though everthing looked good with ifconfig. I think that in order to use the .6 driver, you have to recompile the kernel. I have not tried that yet Besides, the .4 diver works great. I just put the loadndisdriver command in rc.local (wimpy) and it is active on boot.

Brian

I'm starting to think that my problem is with authentication and WEP key, because the ndiswrapper installed and I am able to see wlan0 on my ifconfig.

In windows, I need to specify "open" authentication method and put in a 26-digit wep key for the wireless to work. Does this work with ndiswraper in linux? If so, do I need to do anything special to specify it in my network-scripts file?

Si Chen, I would tend to think the problem might be with your WEP key, but I couldn't be certain. I haven't set up our router with a key yet, so I haven't encountered that problem. You might consider visiting the original post where I got most of the process to see if that poster mentioned how to deal with keys.


In another matter, I don't know what I've done wrong... I had to reinstall Mandrake for unimportant reasons. Now that I've reinstalled it, I'm at step 13, which is trying to execute the HP file. The problem is that in the terminal I get the message "cannot execute binary file." Now, the permissions have been set appropriately, and I'm using "./" before the filename.

What in heaven's name am I doing wrong? I'm asking becuase I would guess that some of you have dealt with this file recently.

Where does that 'GATEWAY' IP address of 192.168.1.1 come from?
Is that something required by your ISP or something?

I'm going to explain this in such a way that a computer purist would want to slap me around, but in my own unvarnished way...

Basically, when you connect to your wireless router (which serves as your "gateway" to the internet), the default address that your computer uses to communicate with the router is 192.168.1.1. So, it's not really something required by the ISP; and I don't even know where the convention came from, but that's the way it is. Every individual who owns a wireless router (I think, and this is where a purist would really slap me hard) uses this gateway address as the default to allow his/her computer to connect to the router and thus to the internet.

The gateway is the destination of last resort. That is, if you want to send a packet to an address that is not on your local network, it will be sent to the gateway. In the case of a wireless network (or a wired one) the gateway is the address of the router.

192.168.1.1 is often used on wireless routers as the address on the local (or inside) network. It does not have to be that address. There really is a lot more here. Does that help at all?

My conputer doesn't see wlan0 when i type in iwconfig. How can I get it to see it?

I'm using a Realtek 8180 based Linksys WPC11 on a livecd distro of Slackware (Called slax, which i have installed on a USB key)). I've got kernel 2.4.22. I've got to the point where the drivers are installed the module is loaded and i can even dhcpcd the wlan0 card and it receives the information. I can goto my routers page and view the DHCP release, so i know it has connected and is working properly. But i still have no network traffic. I am assuming i've setup the gateway wrong or something. As i don't have/can't use a ifcfg-wlan0 file i've been typing the commands in manually. Has anyone solved this problem?

edit - I am using ndiswrapper 0.8 with the latest WinXP drivers from the realtek website net8180.inf

Hi there. Had the same problem with ndiswrapper 0.6 earlier with the intel pc2100. In my case, iwconfig showed a signal strength of 0/100. I think it's just a problem with ndiswrapper, and I don't know how to fix it.