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Issue with Wifi driver for Ferrari 3200 under Linux Mandrake Official Release 2005

post #1 of 5
11/16/05 at 9:55am
Thread Starter 
As the Linux driver is not delivered by Acer / Broadcast, we have to use ndiswrapper with the windows driver.
I installed ndiswrapper using the windows the driver bcmwl5.inf available for the ferrari 3200 on the acer web site.
I got the message (with command ndiswrapper -l) bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present.
But when I proceed to load the module (modprobe ndiswrapper), I get an error message (command dmesg) ndiswrapper not loaded.

Anyone else using this method to get the wifi system work under Linux ?
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post #2 of 5
11/16/05 at 3:35pm

See my thread..

See my thread here:
http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=113245

It really depends on the kernel version and the version of ndiswrapper. For some kernels, there are irq problems that lead to wireless problems. Sometimes, I had to download the latest version of ndiswrapper and recompile it before it worked.

I don't know if the wireless card in the 3200 is the same as the one in the 3400lmi, but I have gotten the wireless card to work in Debian sid, Kanotix, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Knoppix, elive, and Simply Mempis. I currently use Kanotix. The bad news is that for many of these distributions I had to either 1) use cheat codes to enable irq polling, or 2) download and recompile ndiswrapper to get wireless networking to work.

I haven't tried Mandrake yet, but it should be similar. I use the bcmwl5.inf driver from the Acer web site as well. I believe that you need to download ndiswrapper and recompile (make sure you have your kernel's specific vanilla sources). Follow the instructions here:
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...p/Installation

It really is sad that Broadcom is not Linux-friendly. A native driver would be great. Good luck.
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post #3 of 5
11/16/05 at 4:15pm
Thread Starter 

Nice doc, Crust !

Thanks Crust,

Many thanks for your answer and your nice documentation.

I will try to recompile ndiswrapper
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post #4 of 5
11/16/05 at 5:38pm
Thread Starter 

Success

It works fine now, thanks to Crust

First I removed the ndiswrapper module (delivered with the mandrake release) because it doesn't work for me.
I have use ndiswrapper release 1.5 downloading it from http://sourceforge.net
I recompiled ndiswrapper with my kernel sources 2.6.11-6mdk
I re-installed the driver bcmwl5.inf using ndiswrapper
I checked the logs, they were now fine
I configured the wireless connection

and now my config works with the wireless driver available for ferrari 3200 on Acer Web site.
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post #5 of 5
11/17/05 at 4:46am
Glad you got everything sorted out.
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