Author Topic: Can't get Broadcom Wireless Card to work on eMachines m5312 laptop... (Read 1099 times)

wayoung56 · « **on:** November 11, 2012, 01:52:54 AM »

I have a eMachines m5312 laptop a friend gave me after the hard drive died. I replaced the dead 60GB drive with a new 100GB drive and reloaded it with Windows XP Home, shrunk that partition and loaded the latest version of pclinuxos (LXDE Version on it) and got everything to work except the Broadcom Wireless Card to work without any problems.

The wireless card, according to the System Info Program is:

00:0c.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

I have tried everything I could find on the help forums and via Google search via the internet and can not get the darn thing to connect. It sees plenty of potential wireless access points, but every time I try to connect to anything it comes back and says "Error - Connection Failed".

The Broadcom Wireless Card works fine when booted into Windows XP Home, but will not connect when running pclinuxos. FYI, I have loaded both another distro versions 12.04 and 12.10 without any luck on the Broadcom Card.

I am not a Linux newbie, have been running various iterations of Red Hat, Ubuntu, and ran real Unix on Intergraph and Sun Workstations since the mid 1980's. This is the first time I have ever been completely stumped on any issue with any flavor of Linux or Unix.

I worked with a friend at R&R Solutions in 2009 that told me about pclinuxos and I decided to give it a try after coming up blank on the wireless issue with another distro.

I am posting this on the eMachines laptop, currently connected to the Internet via a Proxim Wireless card that always works without any issues on any version of Linux I have ever loaded. It also works flawlessly with a Belkin USB adapter as well. I know that Broadcom Cards are generally a pain to configure, but hoped to get this thing working without using an external device...

I am open to any suggestion more experienced folks on the forum can make to help me resolve this vexing issue...

Thanks and Regards,

Butch Young

TerryN · « **Reply #1 on:** November 11, 2012, 04:48:55 AM »

First of all welcome to the forum

You are right that Broadcom chipsets can be a pain to get working on Linux. Mostly because there are 3 different Linux drivers (plus you can use the Windows drivers under ndiswrapper) and results differ depending on the hardware involved.

The 3 native Linux Drivers are:
wl = The proprietary drivers from Broadcom
b43/b43legacy = Open Source drivers (bundled with kernel but need firmware packages installed separately)
brcmsmac/brcmfmac = Open Source drivers (newer, using new mac80211 kernel infrastructure also bundled with later kernels)

I believe PCLinuxOS configures the wl driver by default or at least it did when I last tried it on a laptop with Broadcom wireless. That driver did not work reliably for me so I switched to using the b43 driver and that sorted the problems for me. Details of another case can be found here http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,104737.0.html

Also if you are using WPA security you should check which version of wpa_supplicant you have as I believe there were some issues here with that recently. A search on the forum with that name should reveal the current state of play.

Hope that helps,
Terry

TheGhost · « **Reply #2 on:** November 11, 2012, 06:06:27 PM »

Check also this thread: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,110200.0.html
Read it in full, near the last posts is the explanation of what the OP did to solve it.
The solution seems to be to use Windows drivers and Ndiswrapper; but in some cases it involves removing the current Broadcom drivers from the kernel.

Hope this helps.

wayoung56 · « **Reply #3 on:** November 12, 2012, 04:14:21 AM »

It's not a Security issue, it won't even connect to a wide open guest access point at work.

I've tried all the Linux Drivers mentioned in all of the various posts, but have not tried the Windows Driver using ndsiwrapper. I'll give that a shot next (when i can find the time) and see how that works out and then reply back here with the results.

Thanks again!!!

pags · « **Reply #4 on:** November 12, 2012, 08:50:00 AM »

Can you check what driver it trying to be used?

lspcidrake can show you that:

Code: [Select]

[jpaglia@paglia-e6500 ~]$ lspcidrake | grep -i wire
firewire_ohci   : Ricoh Co Ltd|R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller [SERIAL_FIREWIRE] (rev: 04)
wl              : Broadcom Corporation|BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [NETWORK_OTHER] (rev: 01)
[jpaglia@paglia-e6500 ~]$

Here, you can see my BCM4322 is using the wl driver.

wayoung56 · « **Reply #5 on:** November 13, 2012, 01:10:22 AM »

The only one that seems to work is the b43 driver, it at least sees the wireless access points, it just fails to connect. Doesn't work with open access points or my system at home using WEP, never tried an access point with WPA.

I have tried the wl driver and the b43legacy driver and the system fails to see the wireless card using those two drivers.

pags · « **Reply #6 on:** November 13, 2012, 07:47:58 AM »

You didn't provide the information that was asked for.

If you're trying to load the driver manually, it may conflict with the previous driver already loaded. In such a case, the first driver needs to be unloaded, first.

If changing the settings for a reboot, the pre-existing driver may need to be blacklisted, to prevent the hardware detection routine from picking an apparently non-functional driver...

wayoung56 · « **Reply #7 on:** November 17, 2012, 02:24:09 AM »

Here are the results of the command lspcidrake I was asked to run earlier:

ath5k : Atheros Communications Inc.|AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter [NETWORK_ETHERNET] (rev: 01)
unknown : Broadcom Corporation|BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller [NETWORK_OTHER] (rev: 03)
firewire_ohci : Texas Instruments|PCI4410 FireWire Controller [SERIAL_FIREWIRE] (rev: 02)

I have tried removing and blacklisting the different drivers as part of my troubleshooting efforts.

pags · « **Reply #8 on:** November 19, 2012, 06:56:03 AM »

OK.
Looks like your system doesn't know what driver it should try. Of the three driver sets mentioned (b43*, brc* and wl*), it's probably certain that you have them all available to you. If you want to be sure, use the following from a command prompt:

Code: [Select]