HP Pavilion ze4900 Broadcom 802.11b/g Problems

**Chasa** · 07-02-2006, 11:26 PM

I have just recently installed Knoppix 4.0.2 onto a HP Pavilion ze4900 Laptop and have been having some problems getting the built in wireless card working.
I downloaded the drivers for the card (a Broadcom BCM94306 802.11 b/g) from hp's website, extracted bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys to the /tmp/ directory, and loaded them using ndiswrapper, but I am unsure as to what to do next.

Code:

root@SYSINS-MOBILE:/home/Ben# ndiswrapper -i /tmp/bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode |0 to IBSSGMode |2
root@SYSINS-MOBILE:/home/Ben# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present
root@SYSINS-MOBILE:/home/Ben# ndiswrapper -m
modprobe config already contains alias directive
root@SYSINS-MOBILE:/home/Ben#

Any help/sugestions anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

**DuckDodgers** · 07-03-2006, 04:32 PM

You will need to load the ndiswrapper module, connect to your router, and get an IP address.

Load module:

Code:

modprobe ndiswrapper

Connect to router:

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 essid yourssid

Get IP address:

Code:

dhclient wlan0

or possibly:

Code:

dhcpcd -t 10 wlan0

**Chasa** · 07-04-2006, 07:35 PM

I am still having some problems so I decided to start from scratch and boot from the cd, below is how far I got.

Code:

root@0[knoppix]# ndiswrapper -i /tmp/bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode |2
^repeated 18 times^
root@0[knoppix]# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present
root@0[knoppix]# ndiswrapper -m
Adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper
root@0[knoppix]# modprobe ndiswrapper
root@0[knoppix]# iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys
Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
    Set failed on device wlan0 ; No such device.

**DuckDodgers** · 07-05-2006, 12:17 AM

Can you post the output of iwconfig, after loading the ndiswrapper module?

**Chasa** · 07-05-2006, 03:55 AM

Code:

root@0[knoppix]# iwconfig
lo	 no wireless extensions.

eth0  no wireless extensions.

**Chasa** · 07-05-2006, 05:47 PM

Ok I've upgraded to 5.0.1 and gotten a little farther, now iwconfig returns the following for eth0:

Code:

IEEE 802.11b/5 ESSID:"linksys" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid Bit Rate=1 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

The network I am trying to connect to is named "linksys" and is open.