Thank you. I did some googling. Here is what I discovered: Although bcm43xx has made it to the kernels starting with 2.6.17, legal issues prevent the direct distribution of the firmware. In order to install the firmware, you need to extract it with a program called 'fwcutter'. There are two different choices of firmware, "SoftMAC" and "MAC80211." You should download and install one of the two, depending on your card (I think). More details here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-409194-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html In my case, I recently upgraded to openSuSE 10.2 (which, after the recent pact with the devil, I think will soon become junked-SuSE-in-favor-of-Ubuntu). Anyway, the 'smart' package manager located fwcutter, which I installed ('smart' uses rpm). After an 'lsmod | grep bcw', I saw modules with the word "soft" already installed, so I decided to extract with 'fwcutter' (as described in the URL above) the firmware from the SoftMAC file. After that, I did a 'rmmod bcm43xx' (because it was already loaded, LOL), and then a "modprobe bcm43xx' and BINGO!!!!!! I saw the blue light blink!!!! iwconfig, and iwlist worked as expected. I dhcpc'ed to the access point and I was surfing!!!!!! The connection remained stable for over 15 minutes. I then shut it down. I have not tried WPA encryption yet (nor WEP encryption, but I assume this will work --I never got WPA to work with ndiswrapper). A few oddities: As others have remarked, the wifi now appears as eth1 instead of wlan0. Second, I observed that when I turn (toggle) the radio off while there is wifi traffic (e.g. when pinging), the blue light stays on contnuously instead of turning off! Otherwise, things seem to work fine, at least as good as under ndiswrapper. I am running 64-bit SuSE 10.2 with an updated vanilla kernel 2.6.20.3, with full preemption enabled. I hope this helps others. Maybe it should be posted on the wiki if there are no inaccuracies. Jonathan Berry wrote: > On 3/22/07, Constantine 'Gus' Fantanas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Thank you. >> >> I tried the 64-bit driver (vanilla kernel 2.6.20), but it doesn't seem >> to run right. Do I need to install additional files like with the Intel >> wifi? TIA. > > For the open-source driver? Yeah, you will need the firmware, just > like with the Intel cards. That's about all I know about it :-). > > Jonathan > _______________________________________________ > LinuxR3000 mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxr3000 > Wiki at http://prinsig.se/weekee/ > -- Running 64-bit Linux on AMD64 _______________________________________________ LinuxR3000 mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxr3000 Wiki at http://prinsig.se/weekee/
