Thanks for any help!

OK so I noticed when I first installed any 14.2 slackware I have to install Wicd to get wired ethernet working, Network manager just spins, connects, disconnects, spins, connects, disconnects over and over. Installing Wicd fixed that.
Now I did a Full DVD install of -current and same issue with network manager except now even wicd won't connect.
I also have Stretch, Buster and Arch on this laptop, they all connect easily.

Can anyone help me figure out why this is happening?

It's crazy!
So i installed b43fwcutter. b43firmware and broadcom-sta from slackbuilds and my wireless is now working- I'm connected but it wont hook to the ethernet network?!

That's really weird. Is Networkmanager launching on start-up? Networkmanager is working fine here on two Thinkpads and three desktops. All of my units are running Slackware64-current.

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hitest mine is a dell 1545 with broadcom 4312 (working) and Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 13).

Even in slackware 14.2 sometimes I have to tell wicd to connect twice, first time it doesn't, then on 2nd attempt it does.
But in every other distro, debian, arch, ubuntu, even void it works flawlessly.

It's not much of a worry now that I got the wireless working for my Slackerc Live DVD but I don't know why networkmanager freaks out even on 14.2....I wonder if its this model of dell.

Odd. Perhaps you can right-click your Networkmanager icon and select the connection that you're having trouble with and click on edit connection. There are several tabs, click on General. Make sure that the box that says all users may connect to this network is checked. Save and exit. On next reboot things will work better if that's the issue.

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Network Manager will occasionally run into issues with some dhcp servers and if you change the dhcp client from dhcpcd to dhclient, it usually fixes the problem of the frequent disconnects. Check out /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-dhcp-client.conf to edit it. You may need to restart NetworkManager (/etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager restart)

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If it just a wired connection have you tried using networkconfig? Also, I'm not sure about networkmanager but wicd probably won't work if you have any entries in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf

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