[SOLVED] Wireless Problems on a Dell Inspiron 1501

[ChildOfMana]

Hi all,

I’ve got a problem with a fresh install of Mint 12 (gnome 32-bit DVD) on an old Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop.

It’s not configured my wireless card. It’s saying ‘Firmware missing’. It can see the card – it just can’t seem to talk to it properly.

There’s a proprietory driver available for the wireless card (I believe it’s a Broadcomm model but not sure exactly which one as I’m in work atm and haven’t got the laptop to hand) so I dutifully plugged in an Ethernet cable, downloaded and activated the driver and restated the computer. However when it came back up again it could no longer even see my wireless card. It didn’t appear in the list of network interfaces at all!

I disabled the proprietory driver and restarted and lo-and-behold the card appeared again… but still not working (and saying ‘Firmware missing’ again).

Now what’s really confusing me here is that I’ve ran fresh installs of Mint 10 and Mint 11 on this laptop for the last couple of years and neither has ever had a problem configuring the wireless card. No proprietory drivers have been needed - it’s just worked straight out of the box.

Now all of a sudden with Mint 12 it needs a proprietory driver? Isn’t this a major step backwards?

Anyone know why; a) it needs a proprietory driver with this version of mint; and b) how I can get my wireless working?

Thanks.

[mads]

Hi!

Menu > Other > Synaptic Package Manager > install "firmware-b43-installer" package.
You may need to reboot.

[ChildOfMana]

Thanks mads I'll give that a try when I get home tonight.

Will let you know how I get on.



Sent from my HTC Desire HD using Tapatalk

[AlbertP]

There are no Broadcom cards that work right out-of-the-box in Mint 10. You must have installed a driver, for example through the Additional Drivers program. On Mint 12 you can use the same program: click your name at the top-right > System Settings. There you can find the Additional Drivers.

For certain Broadcom models (for example 4321, 4322, 43227 and 43228) you might be better off with the Broadcom STA driver (bcmwl-kernel-source) as B43 does not yet fully support them.

Please make sure your card is a Broadcom, and not an Atheros or Intel (or another brand).

Code: Select all

inxi -N

[ChildOfMana]

On Mint 12 you can use the same program: click your name at the top-right > System Settings. There you can find the Additional Drivers

Hi AlbertP

As stated in my initial post I've already tried the additional drivers - it didn't work

Will have a good poke around later though and see what's what.

Cheers.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD using Tapatalk

[AlbertP]

Which Broadcom card do you have?
Please post the output of:

Code: Select all

inxi -N

By the way, you need an internet connection (wired) to download the wifi driver.

[ChildOfMana]

Hi again,

As I said in my first post I already tried a wired connection to download and install the driver. The driver didn't work though.

Anyways I tried mads' solution and that seems to have fixed the problem.

For posterity's sake though - and for anyone else having the same issue, just in case it helps - my Broadcom card is as follows:

Code: Select all

Network:   Card-1 Broadcom BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX driver b44 
           Card-2 Broadcom BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN driver b43-pci-bridge

Thank you both for your help guys, much appreciated

[emg]

Menu > Other > Synaptic Package Manager > install "firmware-b43-installer" package.
You may need to reboot.

Thanks mads!!

I did need to reboot but it worked perfectly. I'm using Linux Mint 16.