openSUSE-10.3-alpha5, WPA-PSK, bcm43xx |
Written by Administrator | |||||
Monday, 25 June 2007 | |||||
I tested openSUSE-10.3-alpha5-dvd-i386 on my Compaq Presario V3222AU notebook with Dell 1390 wlan adapter of miniPCI express type. It comes with the bcm4311 chipset which is one of the most incompatible of the Broadcom chipset model. What made me use the openSUSE-10.3 which is still under heavy development? The openSUSE-10.2 cannot even detect my Dell 1390 wlan adapter (with Broadcom's bcm4311 chipset) despite having the open source bcm43xx driver. Just imagine!! Another very non-appealing thing is the very out-dated 'saviour' ndiswrapper package found in openSUSE-10.2.
The driver for this notebook that I downloaded from HP, uses the bcmwl6.inf and the bcmwl6.sys files instead of the usual bcmwl5 type. And I wouldn't be surprised if the cabextract tool cannot extract the *.sys and *.inf files from the *.exe file which I downloade from HP. Of course, another pain would be, whether the not-so-updated bcm43xx-fwcutter, would be able to extract the firmwares from the bcmwl6.sys file or not. So many unfavourable variable when using openSUSE-10.2 on my Compaq Presario V3222AU notebook that comes with Dell 1390 wifi adapter (with the infamous bcm4311 chipset), led me to test openSUSE-10.3-alpha5-dvd-i386!
I managed to excise the long process/story short by keeping the firmwares for the wifi bcm43xx chipset in my handy usbkey. Actually, I easily collected the bcm43xx firmwares when I tried the Ubuntu 7.04 Live CD on my Compaq Presario V3222AU notebook recently. While I was in the Ubuntu 7.04 desktop, I executed the apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter to get the bcm43xx firmwares to be placed in the /lib/firmware folder of Ubuntu 7.04. From there, I just copied those firmwares to my lovely usbkey.
After installing the latest preview of openSUSE-10.3-alpha5-dvd-i386 to my Compaq Presario V3222AU with the Dell 1390 wlan adapter (with bcm4311 chipset), I copied those firmwares to the /lib/firmware folder of openSUSE- 10.3-alpha5-dvd-i386 from my loyal usbkey. Then, everything just worked! I could connect to my Prolink wifi Adsl router(made in Singapore) with the WPA-PSK encryption enabled, from the Compaq Presario V3222AU note- book using the Dell 1390 wlan adapter (with the bcm43xx chipset on it).
No problem at all with these firmwares that I downloaded from the Ubuntu repository, with the open source bcm43xx driver. No problem with WEP either! Thanks to the bcm43xx firmwares I that collected from the Ubuntu repository. Please be informed that the open source bcm43xx driver is installed by default on many Linux distros too.
Below is a screenshot of the succesful connection from the Broadcom's bcm4311 wlan adapter with encryption protocol turned off on the Prolink.
Succesful connection with the WPA-PSK encryption protol enabled on my Prolink Adsl wifi router, as seen from the CLI.
Succesful connection with the WPA-PSK encryption protocol enabled on my Prolink Adsl wifi router, as seen from the versatile Networkmanager.
By Michael Shee Choon Beng.
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