Considering a wireless card
I am a translator!
I am considering purchasing a Linksys WPC100 b/g/n(draft) to replace my on-board wifi card. It's listed as working with the ath9k driver (http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html)
My on-board model is a Broadcom 4312, which according to this webpage is not fullyfunctional with the free driver: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
Can I assume, then, that this card works without any issues right our of the box? Is there a process to installing a wireless card on a notebook in Trisquel, or does it automatically detect it?
Thanks for helping this Linux newbie get online without that messy cord. :)
I can't say for certain for that card. But yesterday I got myself a Netgear WG111 which is also listed on the FSF's page.
http://www.netgear.com/Products/Adapters/WirelessGAdapters/WG111.aspx
This worked out of the box, just plugged it in and selected the wireless network to connect to. Trisquel did everything automatically.
I had previously tried a Linksys WPC300Nv2 which is listed on the FSF page, but it seemed that my cardbus slot in my Thinkpad T61 (Ricoh R5C843 chipset) didn't seem to be working, I'm not entirely sure why, it doesn't look like the cardbus slot needs any non-free bits to work, anyway I had to take that back unfortunately.
Anyway, it sounds like that card is for a desktop? So I would say that you can be pretty sure it'll work right away.
I am a translator!
The card is for a laptop.
Is there a way to check (e.g. some terminal command) if Linux recognizes my cardbus slot in the first place?
Well post your lspci output and we can at least find out what chipset controls your cardbus slot.
I think that I had done something wrong earlier though which was causing my problems with the cardbus card that I bought a while ago.
"dmesg" works. It gives info about the lastest plugged peripherals.
El dg 03 de 01 de 2010 a les 05:12 +0100, en/na name at domain va
escriure:
> The card is for a laptop.
>
> Is there a way to check (e.g. some terminal command) if Linux recognizes my
> cardbus slot in the first place?
> _______________________________________________
> Trisquel-users mailing list
> name at domain
> http://listas.trisquel.info/mailman/listinfo/trisquel-users
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Aitor Ruano Miralles <name at domain>
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But that is not much good if he wants to try to determine if his cardbus slot works before he purchases the card.
It probably will work though. I think that I had done something silly when I tried a cardbus card on my machine. I'm pretty sure they should work for me, I had probably just done something stupid.
I am a translator!
Here is my lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 04)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 04)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 04)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV620 Audio device [Radeon HD 34xx Series]
03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
03:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
Same chipset as mine... But like I've said, I think that I had done something stupid. Infact I think that I might have had the cardbus slot turned off in the BIOS and forgotten about it when I tried the card.
I'm actually going to buy myself a Dlink DWA945 soon and try it out seeing as they're dirt cheap here in China.
Oops, I meant a Dlink 645. Not that it matters much.
Hey Andrew,
I just got myself a DLink 645 card for my Thinkpad which is using the same chipset, I plugged it in and it works.
Looks like I had done something stupid the first time I tried a cardbus card.
2010/1/3 <name at domain>
> 0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
>
>
Maybe this will help you. Not sure about the liberty of the instructions
though:
Known PCI devices
Whether a PCI device is supported by the b43/b43legacy driver can be found
out with the lspci command:
lspci -vnn | grep 14e4
The command will result in a string similiar to this example:
0001:01:01.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318
[AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev
02)
You should ignore anything, except the last part inside of the [ ] brackets.
In the table below you can check whether your device is supported.
*PCI-ID*
*State*
*Chip*
*Modes*
*PHY version*
*Driver*
14e4:4301
supported
BCM4301?
?
?
b43legacy
14e4:4306
supported
BCM4306
?
?
b43legacy?
14e4:4307
supported
BCM4306
?
?
b43
14e4:4311
supported
BCM4311
?
?
b43
14e4:4312
supported (802.11g only)
BCM4312
a/b/g
?
b43
14e4:4312
not supported - ID is duplicated
BCM4312
b/g
?
b43
14e4:4315
supported 2.6.32 and later
BCM4312
b/g
LP
b43
14e4:4318
supported
BCM4318
?
?
b43
14e4:4319
supported
BCM4311?
?
?
b43
14e4:4320
supported
BCM4306
?
?
b43
14e4:4321
not supported
?
?
?
b43
14e4:4324
not supported?
?
?
?
b43
14e4:4325
not supported
?
?
?
b43
14e4:4328
not supported
BCM4321
?
N
b43
14e4:4329
not supported
BCM4321
?
N
b43
14e4:432b
not supported
BCM4322
?
N
b43
Note that the PCI-ID is _not_ in direct correlation with the Chip-ID. The
Chip-ID is printed to the kernel log by the b43 driver on startup (example):
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4318 WLAN found
Often the PCI-ID equals the Chip-ID, but that's not always the case and it's
a constant source of confusion.
Supported chip types
- bcm4303 (802.11b-only chips, uses b43legacy)
- bcm4306 (Rev. 2 uses b43legacy, Rev. 3 uses b43)
- bcm4309 (only the 2.4GHz part)
- bcm4311 rev 1 / bcm4312
- bcm4311 rev 2 / bcm4312 (needs patches for 2.6.24)
- bcm4312 with a/b/g (only the 2.4GHz part and no low-power LP-PHY
devices)
- bcm4318
Supported in wireless-testing/compat-wireless-2.6
- BCM4312 802.11b/g, AKA BCM 4310 USB - This device has an LP PHY. Work
on this device has begun, and the device now works in wireless-testing (and
will be supported in 2.6.32), but performance is sub-par, due to the lack of
calibration support. Note: This card uses the PCI-E bus, despite its name.
- BCM4313 802.11b/g - This device also has an LP PHY. The same probably
applies to other LP-PHY devices.
unsupported chips
- The 802.11a part of the 4309 and 4312 is not supported.
- BCM 4322 802.11a/b/g/n (Has PCI-ID 0x432B) - This device has an N Phy.
There is no support for any Draft 802.11n features. We are working on it.
- BCM 4321 (Has PCI-IDs 0x4328 and 0x4329) - These devices have N Phys.
There is no support for any Draft 802.11n features. We are working on it.
Taken from: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
As it says you should find the exact PCI-ID with
lspci -vnn | grep 14e4
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