[Michael]

So upon doing a fresh install of DreamLinux, literally the only thing that failed to work out of the box, was my wireless WEP connection.  In fact as far as DreamLinux was concerned, I didn't have a wlan0/eth1/wifi1 at all.  I found it a bit strange because from everything else I experienced, DL 3.5 had excellent hardware support.  It even managed to pick up my fax, something that the majority of Distro's struggled to do.

I scoured the forums for a solid two hours, finding mixed results.  Seems that whether it be through the packaged B43, or ndiswrapper, everyone was getting mixed results, in some cases mixed results with the same card.  My card in particular, BCM4312, seemed to be giving people some problems, as were just about all BCM43xx cards were.

Eventually, and I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner, but I come to find that Broadcom their own set of drivers for this very same model of card, both in 32-bit and 64-bit support.  I didn't see any mention of these particular drivers here on the board, but after hours of toying around with B43 workarounds, and ndiswrapper.  They solved my issue in a matter of minutes.

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

Installing and building the drivers is at tops, a 10 minute task.  And I just came to find today that Broadcom also provides a README.txt on that same page, and after looking over it, it seems to be rather noob friendly.  So there shouldn't be much difficulty in building and installing these straight from the available tarball's on Broadcoms site.

So hopefully this will save some people the trouble of having to deal with ndiswrapper, and save a few people some headaches.  It certainly saved me some trouble, so I thought it was worth sharing.

- Mike

[JustADream]

Thanks for this tip but unfortunately it didn't work so smooth for me.

I have a Broadcom as well ( damn this card )

I enabled the b43 cutter thing through terminal and followed what the DreamLinux manual says and everything went exactly how the site said but it still wasn't recognizing the card.

Now I see yours, did the same exact thing as you say ( through terminal, enter for each no errors ) got to the end, closed out, clicked the network symbol, clicked refresh, nothing.

So I rebooted to see if maybe that could do anything... still nothing...

Weird...

The router I have is a Linksys Wireless N Router and the card, of course is a freakin broadcom lol

Any other suggestions?

[yoshiki2]

That's not working.. and I only have wireless @ home..

[Michael]

Thanks for this tip but unfortunately it didn't work so smooth for me.

I have a Broadcom as well ( damn this card )

I enabled the b43 cutter thing through terminal and followed what the DreamLinux manual says and everything went exactly how the site said but it still wasn't recognizing the card.

Now I see yours, did the same exact thing as you say ( through terminal, enter for each no errors ) got to the end, closed out, clicked the network symbol, clicked refresh, nothing.

So I rebooted to see if maybe that could do anything... still nothing...

Weird...

The router I have is a Linksys Wireless N Router and the card, of course is a freakin broadcom lol

Any other suggestions?

Can you tell me what the output is when you input lspci into terminal?  I tried this exact same method with my wifes machine, which was also using a broadcom card, and I had to go the ndiswrapper route to eventually enable wireless.

That's not working.. and I only have wireless @ home..

Are you saying that you can connect wirelessly from home, but cannot recognize other networks?  Or your only means of connecting at home is via a wireless network?

[richs-lxh]

Remember that to load the wireless modules in Dreamlinux we have the B43loader and ath Athloader for Atheros cards.

Code:

sudo b43load b43

Will load the Broadcom b43 module,check if it's loaded with:

Code:

lsmod

Check your wireless card with:

Code:

sudo iwconfig

To start the card:

Code:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

Also rememebr to physically activate the card, either with an "Fn+FX" key combination or by a switch on the case.

A reboot may be needed, and you may even have to add "b43" to /etc/modules

Also, sometimes Wicd needs time to refresh, also make sure that your card is selected as the Wlan card in the Wicd settings. Usually wla0 unless you use 2 or more cards (USB, Pcmcia etc)