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Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

b43 won't recognise Broadcom 4312 wireless card

I've had a Dell XPS M1530 laptop for a few weeks now. It's got a Dell 1395 wireless card, which is actually a disguised Broadcom 4312 card.
lspci recognises it as such:

[sander@lappy686 ~]$ lspci | grep -i broadcom
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

The card works fine with the properietary broadcom-wl drivers. I'm using these right now, in fact.

However, I'd like to use b43 if at all possible, because:
- b43 supports monitor mode;
- broadcom-wl drivers are proprietary, whereas the b43 ones are open.

I have followed the guide on the wiki to extract the firmware from the proprietary drivers:

[sander@lappy686 ~]$ sudo ls /lib/firmware/b43/
a0g0bsinitvals4.fw  a0g0initvals9.fw     a0g1initvals5.fw     b0g0bsinitvals9.fw  lp0bsinitvals13.fw  lp0initvals15.fw      pcm5.fw     ucode4.fw
a0g0bsinitvals5.fw  a0g1bsinitvals13.fw  a0g1initvals9.fw     b0g0initvals13.fw   lp0bsinitvals14.fw  n0absinitvals11.fw  ucode11.fw  ucode5.fw
a0g0bsinitvals9.fw  a0g1bsinitvals5.fw     b0g0bsinitvals13.fw  b0g0initvals4.fw      lp0bsinitvals15.fw  n0bsinitvals11.fw   ucode13.fw  ucode9.fw
a0g0initvals4.fw    a0g1bsinitvals9.fw     b0g0bsinitvals4.fw   b0g0initvals5.fw      lp0initvals13.fw    n0initvals11.fw      ucode14.fw
a0g0initvals5.fw    a0g1initvals13.fw     b0g0bsinitvals5.fw   b0g0initvals9.fw      lp0initvals14.fw    pcm4.fw          ucode15.fw

when I insert the b43 module (sudo modprobe b43), the following shows up in /var/log/everything.log:

Nov  7 20:58:36 lappy686 Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMLR, Firmware-ID: FW13 ]

... and nothing more. I was told that this isn't normal

The actual problem is that no network interface shows up in ifconfig / iwconfig. The only ones that are there are lo and eth0 (wired ethernet). When I use broadcom-wl, the wireless interface shows up as "eth1".

I have also tried to extract the firmware from some older versions of the driver, but the same thing happens. What's curious is that it'll still say "Firmware-ID: FW13" in /var/log/everything.log...

So, anybody have any clues? I guess it's not that urgent, but it sucks that I have to use a  proprietary driver. The only other option I haven't tried is ndiswrapper, and frankly, I'm not sure I want to

---

You like cheese? You like peas? You'll love cheezy peas!

string

Member

Registered: 2008-11-03

Posts: 286

Re: b43 won't recognise Broadcom 4312 wireless card

What does `grep MODULES /etc/rc.conf` say?

Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

Re: b43 won't recognise Broadcom 4312 wireless card

Right now it says

MODULES=(!pcspkr !snd_pcsp !ieee1394 !ohci1394 !bluetooth !hci_usb acpi-cpufreq sky2 nvidia wl evdev psmouse snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss snd-hwdep snd-page-alloc snd-pcm snd-timer snd snd-hda-intel soundcore uinput)

... yeah, I know
To test b43 i've tried to replace "wl" with "!wl !bcm43xx b43", but no luck.

I blacklisted some modules to disable the PC speaker, the firewire port and bluetooth, as you can see. That doesn't have anything to do with it, though, does it?

---

You like cheese? You like peas? You'll love cheezy peas!

string

Member

Registered: 2008-11-03

Posts: 286

Re: b43 won't recognise Broadcom 4312 wireless card

On my machine:

lspci | grep -i broadcom
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)

dmesg | grep -i broadcom
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found
Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMLR, Firmware-ID: FW13 ]

grep MODULES /etc/rc.conf
MODULES=(b43 !b44 !pcspkr !snd_pcsp)

--

I wanted to look at the MODULES section on your machine because, indeed, I was planning to suggest something along the lines of "b43 !wl". Now I suppose that it would not work (as you seem to have already tried it).