utu
09-08-2012, 07:35 PM
.
After three years of faithful service, the wifi in my Dell 1545 Laptop
began being intermittently troublesome. Left on-line for a few hours
unattended, I would find the wifi not only dead, but whatever it finds
in knoppix-data.img would not allow me to get re-connected. I had to
re-establish persistent store to get on-line again.
I went to Dell's on-line store, gave them my product ID and found there
was a re-furbished wifi for $22 plus tax with free shipping. On this
same site I was able to download an illustrated owner's manual which
spelled-out how I might easily remove and replace the wifi. The $22
replacement arrived in a few days and I was able to do the physical part
of the replacement in mere minutes.
The wifi provided was not an exact replacement, but a slight 'upgrade'
from a/b/g to a/b/g/n. The original and the replacement have different
part numbers, but seem to be operationally interchangeable. The original
was a BCM4312, Dell part nr DW-1397; the replacement a BCM4322, DW-1510.
Both Windows 7 and Knoppix 7 easily found and correctly installed drivers.
The Windows 7 driver installation said, incorrectly, that its install
was 'unsuccessful'.
I was pleased with my diagnosis and my bargain and my successful repair.
For a while, that is. Guess what, the replacement wifi pretty much
matches the original, including my complaint of infrequent intermittence.
So, here's a more complete statement of the intermittence. Very
infrequenly, if I leave my CD-size LiveUSB on-line with no keyboard
activity I may return and find the wifi connection gone, AND the
driver unloaded from the Linux kernel. The connection does not re-
establish itself, even on reboot, without some help.
There are two simple work-arounds that solve my problem for all practical
purposes. First, if I notice a dropped connection, I can get back on-line,
without rebooting, with sudo modprobe b43. Second, I might double-down
by adding, as root, b43 to my /etc/modules file to make sure b43 gets
loaded at boot.
Both the original and the replacement wifis are among those which
the b43/linuxwireless.org folks say work both with b43 and wl drivers.
In Knoppix 6.7.1, with the original wifi I never saw this intermittence
with either driver; however, my experience was mostly with the wl driver,
I only used the b43 driver for a short time before the advent of Knoppix 7.
In Knoppix 7, there is currently only a b43 option. I've seen the
intermittence in both the original and replacement wifis.
After three years of faithful service, the wifi in my Dell 1545 Laptop
began being intermittently troublesome. Left on-line for a few hours
unattended, I would find the wifi not only dead, but whatever it finds
in knoppix-data.img would not allow me to get re-connected. I had to
re-establish persistent store to get on-line again.
I went to Dell's on-line store, gave them my product ID and found there
was a re-furbished wifi for $22 plus tax with free shipping. On this
same site I was able to download an illustrated owner's manual which
spelled-out how I might easily remove and replace the wifi. The $22
replacement arrived in a few days and I was able to do the physical part
of the replacement in mere minutes.
The wifi provided was not an exact replacement, but a slight 'upgrade'
from a/b/g to a/b/g/n. The original and the replacement have different
part numbers, but seem to be operationally interchangeable. The original
was a BCM4312, Dell part nr DW-1397; the replacement a BCM4322, DW-1510.
Both Windows 7 and Knoppix 7 easily found and correctly installed drivers.
The Windows 7 driver installation said, incorrectly, that its install
was 'unsuccessful'.
I was pleased with my diagnosis and my bargain and my successful repair.
For a while, that is. Guess what, the replacement wifi pretty much
matches the original, including my complaint of infrequent intermittence.
So, here's a more complete statement of the intermittence. Very
infrequenly, if I leave my CD-size LiveUSB on-line with no keyboard
activity I may return and find the wifi connection gone, AND the
driver unloaded from the Linux kernel. The connection does not re-
establish itself, even on reboot, without some help.
There are two simple work-arounds that solve my problem for all practical
purposes. First, if I notice a dropped connection, I can get back on-line,
without rebooting, with sudo modprobe b43. Second, I might double-down
by adding, as root, b43 to my /etc/modules file to make sure b43 gets
loaded at boot.
Both the original and the replacement wifis are among those which
the b43/linuxwireless.org folks say work both with b43 and wl drivers.
In Knoppix 6.7.1, with the original wifi I never saw this intermittence
with either driver; however, my experience was mostly with the wl driver,
I only used the b43 driver for a short time before the advent of Knoppix 7.
In Knoppix 7, there is currently only a b43 option. I've seen the
intermittence in both the original and replacement wifis.