Broadcom 4318 driver problems in Ubuntu

[n00b54]

Machine specs:

HP dv4405nr Pavilion notebook
1.5GHz Celeron M
1.2 GB RAM
Wireless Card: Broadcom BCM 4318 [Air Force One 54G]
OS: Dual boot between Ubuntu Edgy and XP Pro


In the transition from confident Windows user into the unfamiliar world of Linux, I can't seem to solve one of the fundamental issues - wireless card driver.

Ubuntu simply does not communicate with the wireless card, as it does not appear in the Network Settings, and the card light refuses to come on (common problem with a wireless card with Windows drivers).

Following the advice of countless forums, I have attempted two distinct processes to fix the problem:

1) Install the "fw-cutter" package, which supposedly sucks the firmware out of a .o file (readily available for download) and places it into the firmware directory. All commands were completed successfully, but never succeeded in allowing the OS to communicate with the card.

2) Use "ndiswrapper", along with the Windows .inf & .sys files to 'trick' Edgy into working with the card. After finding the original driver files in the Windows partition, I once again followed this process with every command seeming to work perfectly.

Neither has had any effect, and the card still shows up in the Device Manager as a PCI device, but is not recognized as a network connection through the default GUI or Network-Manager (also an attempt for this problem).

Any thoughts? Help is appreciated!

[beagle2]

Couple of points, as per http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices bcm4318 may not perform well which may explain your problem. If you want to use ndiswrapper then you have to disable the bcm43xx module. Add 'blacklist bcm43xx' to etc/modprobe.d/blacklist to stop it loading at boot, rmmod bcm43xx , rmmod ndiswrapper then modprobe ndiswrapper.

[n00b54]

This one seemed to fix the problem for me (or, at least its working to post this reply!!):


http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=197102