help me with the wireless LAN on Acer 5300

[johnrw]

I uninstalled the bcm43xx and reinstalled it with bcm43xx-fwcutter.

lsmod | grep bcm43xx
bcm43xx 417768 0
ieee80211softmac 27008 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 33864 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac
firmware_class 11648 2 bcm43xx,pcmcia

This looks normal, right?

Good so far.

dmeg | grep bcm43xx show some errors.

bcm43xx driver
bcm43xx: Chip ID 0x4318, rev 0x2
bcm43xx: Number of cores: 4
bcm43xx: Core 0: ID 0x800, rev 0xd, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 1: ID 0x812, rev 0x9, vendor 0x4243, disabled
bcm43xx: Core 2: ID 0x804, rev 0xc, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: Core 3: ID 0x80d, rev 0x7, vendor 0x4243, enabled
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Detected PHY: Version: 3, Type 2, Revision 7
bcm43xx: Detected Radio: ID: 8205017f (Manuf: 17f Ver: 2050 Rev:
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: Radio turned off
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.

the stuff above is where the driver fails on bootup...
Below that, looks good except I don't see this line... or something similar

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:04.0[A] -> Link [LNKE] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10
(from my driver output above)

bcm43xx: ASSERTION FAILED (radio_attenuation < 10) at: drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_phy.c:1485:bcm43xx_find_lopair()
bcm43xx: ASSERTION FAILED (radio_attenuation < 10) at: drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_phy.c:1485:bcm43xx_find_lopair()

This looks like something is still getting in the way. IRQ conflict. Wrong driver files ,DMA who knows...
antenna signal is probably zero as seen by the driver (without looking at driver source)

which firmware did you use? You need to get the right driver files for this to work... pay attention to 32 or 64 bit.

what does lspci say?

If you look here for a driver that matches yoour card... and use firmware cutter on one of those.
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...index.php/List
that would be a good starting point.

best,
john

[johnrw]

After googling your error, these 2 links may indicate that bcm43xx may not work for your card yet.
The bcm43xx driver is seems to be very active on the development side. So, if it is not working yet for your card you shouldn't have long to wait.

http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/lin...05.1/1318.html

http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/lin...05.1/1333.html

I think you should try to repair ndiswrapper, after knoppix boots up. I have encryption when using that method, and dhcp which is probably more important in wireless circumstances.

If you try to fix ndiswrapper, then I must also recomend getting the kernel module source package,
which will not compile if you don't disable usb support. (You'll get an error on line 665 in usb.c)
For others with usb cards... here is a patch that fixes that one:
667c667,668
< pipe_handle->bEndpointAddress, interval);
---
> pipe_handle->bEndpointAddress,
> pipe_handle->bInterval);



You can use the "Manage Software in KNOPPIX" item found in the Knoppix -> Utilities to upgrade to these 3
ndiswrapper-common (1.23-1)
ndiswrapper-source (1.23-1)
ndiswrapper-utils-1.8

Or just get them straight here.
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/...wrapper-source
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/...wrapper-common

This one has a 386 and a 64 bit version...
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/...pper-utils-1.8
So I would let kpackage pick

But I found the kernel driver version 1.16 was lacking, and the source 1.23 version works, though it does emit some harmless messages in the system log when I change things around.

If you tell kpackage to get the source for the kernel module, it will be downloaded to /usr/src
(I just copy it to the desktop and extract it there.)
go to the new folder and do a
make ; make install

Although, once you decide to upgrade the kernel module, you'll need to get the newer debhelper too
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/debhelper
In case you are wondering... I don't do this evertime I bootup, I have it in scripts that start when Knoppix loads my configs.tbz.
They add about a minute to start knoppix, but having wireless makes it worth it.

If you would like, you can email me directly and I will just send you the files to try out. You have been without wireless for too long.

best,
john