So, I decided to upgrade to 14.2 because of some other problems after update to 14.1. As usual I now have problems with my wireless adapter.
Broadcom BCM4318 AirForce One. This card has always been a problem, that is one reason I don't do system upgrades unless some other problem occurs.

Each upgrade seems to create a new issue, but usually I can make it work, but this time I can't even get it to turn on. I know it is a driver issue because it works fine with a Puppy install I have on a thumb drive. (Slacko of course).

I have tried the drivers from Slack Build with no joy even though this card is listed in the compatibility list. (both sta and fwcutter/b43 methods)

At this point I am tempted to just install Puppy to this old laptop and go from there.

I don't have any experience with broadcom devices, but it's probably worth checking `lsmod' and see if you recognize any wireless drivers being loaded. I used to get issues with my old ralink device which would always load up the wrong kernel module. Possibly try blacklisting the ones you are certain aren't related to your device and manually load the correct module. That's the first thing i would try to do.

I would also check with rfkill and make sure it isn't turned off.

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I had an old laptop with that card. There was a hotkey to trigger it on/off in the hardware. Which always got in the way. Way back then I used the ndiswrapper driver which had poor signal strength. But the linux driver eventually worked and pretty well. It died a while ago after a year plus of running it with a fan that no longer worked. Technically it still works, but not reliably and I'm using the power supply on a discounted monitor that didn't have one.

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Don't see your card listed for the broadcom-sta driver.
Do see it listed on the b43 website though and it should support it, so like the others said, make sure that the correct module is loaded and blacklist any others if needed.
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43/#firmware

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So! I deleted everything I had previously installed and started from scratch. This time (following instructions from a Salix link) I downloaded, built, installed fwcutter, then rebooted. After reboot I downloaded, built, installed b43-firmware, and rebooted again.

After reboot rfkill list showed a hardware off. (Previously it was showing everything on) I pressed the hardware button, and lo and behold the little blue light came on. After configuring for my wireless everything seems to be working, although it is occasionally dropping out and reconnecting for some reason.

I've never had to jump through this particular set of hoops before, although it is always something with this card. That is why I don't usually upgrade the system unless there is some over-riding reason.

Now if I can figure out why it is dropping out all will be ok again.

Switch Network Manager to use dhclient instead of dhcpcd. I'm short on time, but it is in a conf file in a subfolder under /etc/NetworkManager/

Ok, I have a bit more time now. The file you want to edit is /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-dhcp-client.conf

Comment out the dhcpcd line and uncomment the dhclient line. You might need to just disconnect and reconnect for the changes to take place, or it might require restarting Network Manager.

Both dhclient and dhcpcd work sporadically. Pat felt that dhcpcd was a bit less problematic, which is why it is default, but some don't have any luck with it and can switch to dhclient to relieve those issues.

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That seems to have stopped the dropouts, it even seems to have sped things up a bit. Although that was going to be my next snivel about this particular upgrade.

The network connection is running much slower than it should. (I have a fairly fast broadband connection) Youtube videos don't want to run smoothly, I'm get a lot of slowdowns.

I had the slow speeds once before when I allowed sbopkg to update my b43 and fwcutter files to the latest version. At the time I still had an older driver version that I reverted back to. Now I don't remember which version it was. It was one I had saved from when I upgraded from 13.37 to 14.1

Every little bit helps though, thanks much for your assistance.

Definitely a firmware/driver issue. I fired Puppy back up and it flies. YouTube videos play with no jerkiness or halts.

I can't copy and paste from the terminal in Puppy, but dmesg | grep b43 lists the firmware as version 666.2

You can try using the firmware package from 13.37.

https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1.../b43-firmware/

There's also a legacy-firmware package from the 13.37 repo.

https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1...gacy-firmware/

Hopefully one of these will help.

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I may give that a try if I can't find a setting somewhere to speed this version up a little. Your earlier suggestion did that somewhat. Thanks. It may be time I pay attention to my signature though and just go ahead and buy a new laptop. Or down grade to a lighter OS.

I "upgraded" drivers and firmware to 13.37 version and everything seems fine now.

I think this will be the last system upgrade for this old 'puter.

Marking this solved.

Thanks for all the help.