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On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Gordon Henderson <gordon+dcglug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, Neil Winchurst wrote: > >> On 27/10/10 17:43, Rob Beard wrote: >>> >>> I have a feeling that the Broadcom BCM 4318 is your wifi card and may >>> need a firmware or proprietary driver. I'm in the process of fixing a >>> laptop for a friend which also has a Broadcom wifi card (not sure if >>> it's the same one mind) and when booting in Ubuntu 10.04 it comes up >>> with a message saying that something is required, I think it may be a >>> restricted driver. >>> >>> This forum post covers this particular card on Ubuntu 10.04 (which I >>> believe Mint 9 is based on): >>> >>> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1507981 >>> >>> Doing a search on Ubuntu 10.10 I find that there is a package >>> firmware-b43-installer in the repositories which is an installer package >>> for the firmware for this wifi card although on the forum post someone >>> suggests installing b43-fwcutter. >>> >>> Of course to download these packages you'll need to plug your machine >>> into a wired network connection (the Realtek 8139 wired ethernet should >>> be supported out of the box). >>> >>> Hope this helps. >>> >>> Rob >>> >> Thanks for the help. I will do some research. What surprises me is that I >> had no problem with Mint v7. Both Ethernet and Wifi just worked. Now I have >> installed v9 I am having problems. >> >> Perhaps they are working on the system so beloved of our politicians. Does >> it work? Yes? Oh well, we had better change it then. > > A lot might depends on how "free" Mint is. The Broadcom driver is free - > it's in the kernel, but you need some proprietary code which isn't - that > needs to be loaded into the chipset at boot time - that's what fw-cutter is > for - I think you need a copy of the windows driver to feed into it so it > extracts the firmware. > > I suspect early versions of Mint just indluded the code - against the > copyright/whatever and not fully in the spirit of "free"... So there appears > to be a regression. > > I use a braodcom chipset on my latop with Debian Lenny, but I needed to feed > the windows driver into the fw-cutter, or something, but it's been so-long > since I set it up, I've forgotten the exact sequence... > > Gordon Fairly recently I had a broadcom wireless card not working on Debian Lenny. With help from the list I got it working using the instructions found here :- http://wiki.debian.org/bcm43xx#supported-bcm43xx I do not know if these instructions will work on mint 9; but if its based on ubuntu .... Best wishes roly :-) -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq