BCM4306

[stosss <stosss@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Larry Finger
<Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> wrote:
> On 01/26/2013 09:34 PM, stosss wrote:
>>
>> Following the instructions from
>> http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
>>
>> lspci -vnn -d 14e4:
>>
>> 0b:03.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306
>> 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4320] (rev 03)
>>               Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Broadcom  802.11b/g
>> WLAN [103c:12f8]
>>               Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 5
>>               Memory at c8206000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled]
>> [size=8k]
>>               Kernel modules: ssb
>>
>>
>> PCI-ID          Supported       Chip ID         Modes    PHY version
>> 14e4:4320       yes            BCM4306/3         ?            G (r2)
>>
>> Device firmware installation
>>
>> The Broadcom wireless chip needs proprietary software (called
>> "firmware") that runs on the wireless chip itself to work properly.
>> This firmware is copyrighted by Broadcom and must be extracted from
>> Broadcom's proprietary drivers. To get such firmware on your system,
>> you must download the driver from a legal distribution point, extract
>> it, and install it. This is accomplished different ways by different
>> Linux distributions, so please read the section for yours for the best
>> results. You will need an alternate working internet connection (by
>> Ethernet cable, for example) since the firmware cannot be included
>> with the distro itself.
>>
>> Post details for missing distributions at b43-dev at lists.infradead.org.
>> Note: the firmware from the binary drivers is copyrighted by Broadcom
>> Corporation and cannot be redistributed.
>>
>> I have been to the broadcom site. I have found and downloaded files
>> from the broadcom site and a couple other sites that are for the
>> bcm4306.
>>
>> I am running PCLinuxOS which is a combination of Mandriva, Ubuntu,
>> Debian and a few other distributions.
>>
>> I have installed from the distribution repo
>> b43-firmware
>> b43-fwcutter
>> b43legacy-firmware
>> bcm43xx-firmware
>> bcm43-fwcutter
>> dkms-broadcom-wl
>>
>> According to the info above this chip should work. Something is
>> missing but I don't know what it is.
>>
>> There are three windows drivers that show up with ndiswrapper -l that
>> should work as well but they don't either.
>>
>> I don't know what else to check or do. Do I need to black list the
>> Kernel module ssb ? I have tried to get a Linux or windows driver to
>> work and I have tried several things even uninstalling all drivers and
>> then installing the ones listed above.
>>
>> It would be awesome if someone could tell me what I haven't done that
>> I need to do and point me to a workable solution.
>
>
> Did you run b43-fwcutter to extract the firmware?

I don't know what to do here or if I need to.

> Do you have files in directory /lib/firmware/b43/?

Yes, all of them end in .fw the b43-firmware is provided by the the
distribution repo. I am assuming that it, too, has a script similar to
the one with your distribution. There have been several from the
distro forum who have used a few methods to achieve success on their
systems but none of their suggestions have worked for me. Maybe
because I need to run that b43-fwcutter but I don't know what file to
use it on. If I knew the answer to that I might have the problem
solved.

> I use the openSUSE distro, which includes a script
> /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware that downloads the necessary Broadcom
> driver file, extracts the firmware using fwcutter, and writes the files to
> the firmware directory. I have no idea how PCLinuxOS does it.

I was actually considering installing openSUSE on the laptop that I am
having the problem on. To see if I could resolve the problem. I saw it
listed as one specifically referenced on
thehttp://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43 site.