Third Stone Software

Installing wireless cards that used Broadcom bcm43xx wireless chips was historically not an easy task for Linux users. Broadcom never released details about these chips, so there was not a native Linux driver. The workaround was to use NDISwrapper with a Windows driver file. However, locating the correct driver file and configuring NDISwrapper could be a difficult process.

There is now a better option. Included with Linux kernels since 2.6.17 is a native driver based on reverse-engineered specifications. All that is needed to use the driver is firmware for the wireless chip. This firmware is copyrighted by Broadcom and it must be extracted from Broadcom’s proprietary drivers. A tool named b43-fwcutter was developed for this purpose, and can be installed as an APT package.

I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) recently on a Dell Inspiron 8200. It has no built-in wireless, but instead a Belkin F5D7010 PCMCIA card. After installation was complete, I followed these steps to identify and verify the chip, build the b43-fwcutter tool, download and install the firmware, and finally configure the wireless network.

1. Run the following command to determine that your wireless card has the Broadcom 4318 chipset [1]. The PCI ID 14e4:4318 identifies the card as having the Broadcom BCM4318 chipset, which is supported by the b43 driver [2] [3].

   
   > lspci -vnn | grep 14e4
   07:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)
   
   

2. You will need to install b43-fwcutter to download and install the firmware. If you have alternate internet access, you can simply retrieve the apt package.

   
   > apt-get install b43-fwcutter
   
   

   If not, follow these directions to download and build the tool. [4]

   
   > wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
   > tar xjf b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
   > cd b43-fwcutter-012
   > make
   
   

3. Now get version 4.150.10.5 of Broadcom’s proprietary driver, and use b43-fwcutter to install the firmware.

   
   > wget http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
   > tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
   > cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
   > sudo ../../b43-fwcutter-012/b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o
   
   

4. Restart your computer.
5. After your computer has rebooted, if the two lights on your wireless card are lit up, the card is ready to use.
6. In the upper right corner of your screen, you should see the NetworkManager icon. Right-clicked and make sure that both “Enable Networking” and “Enable Wireless” are checked. Then left-click and a list of available networks will be displayed. Select one, or select “Connect to Hidden Wireless Network” if your wireless network is not broadcasting an SSID.

References:

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardwareSupportComponentsWirelessNetworkCardsBelkin#PCMCIA

[2] http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Known_PCI_devices

[3] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx

[4] http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#fw-b43-new