Re: [BLUG] help desperately needed for wireless on Debian

Okay. I spoke to soon. The reason the firmware doesn't ship in the
case is because of legal reasons. The site I mentioned doesn't
actually link to any firmware files.

This may be useful, from
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1071920&mode=linear :
| * Copy the driver from the CD that came with the Card
| * Copy it over from your windows partition if you have access to
it, it will be located here: /Windows/System32/Drivers/bcmwl5.sys
| * Obtain it from here -http://sidulus.textdrive.com/bcmwl5sys.zip
| * Get any driver for your card of any date from their website -
use this if initially you are not successful first tome try some
newer/older drivers

You use a tool (mentioned at the page I referenced earlier) to "cut"
the firmware out of the Windows driver.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Steven Black

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 9:33 PM, Loren Serfass
<lorenserfass331@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>     I've been trying for about 12 hours to get my wireless internet
> connection working, using my old laptop and a new PCMCIA card.  I've
> followed directions from several websites (some are listed in this
> email), installed lots of tools, and read lots of user forums where
> people with the similar problems are going around in circles and
> occasionally stumbling by luck on a solution that happens to work for
> their specific situation.  Before I give up, perhaps the solution will
> be obvious to someone in a local group.
>     In brief, the websites say my card should work, and my wireless
> interface is now "configured" and "active."  But the "link" light on
> the card is still off, and when I try wpa_supplicant the PING fails.
> The iwconfig command shows that there is still no ESSID and the Access
> Point is "Invalid."  When I run dmesg, it shows the following messages
> over and over:
> bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
> bcm43xx: core_up for active 802.11 core failed (-2)
>     I don't quite understand what these terms mean.
>     If someone could help, I would appreciate it tremendously!
>
>     Here are some details to explain some of the steps I've taken.
> According to linuxwireless.org, my PCMCIA card should work with a b43
> driver (my card is a Linksys WPC54G ver. 3 with a BCM4318 chipset), so
> I've followed their directions at
> http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
> The b43-fwcutter program runs automatically when I install it using
> synaptic.  Afterwards, there are b43 and b43legacy folders in
> /etc/firmware/, which seems to be correct.  But the connection doesn't
> work.  I don't know how to verify that the firmware has actually been
> loaded onto the device, which the page claims is necessary.
>     There's a completely different set of directions at
> http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000167
> This approach uses ndiswrapper to translate between a windows driver
> and the operating system.  I've tried installing it and I successfully
> loaded the module into the kernel.  Everything went OK until the
> section entitled "Set up networking."  I used the "Network Settings"
> GUI, which takes a long time but eventually says that the wireless
> interface is active.  When I say "ifup eth2" to the terminal, it says
> "interface eth2 already configured."  However, this doesn't solve the
> ESSID and Access Point problems, and the directions don't help.
>
> Thanks,
> Loren
> _______________________________________________
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> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

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