Problems with bcm43xx-fwcutter

bof bof at pcisys.net
Sun May 28 00:06:45 UTC 2006


lo,

I am having some trouble getting bcm43xx to work. I have tried following 
the HOWTO instructions that you had posted at 
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/fedora-ppc/2006-March/000804.html.

I was able to install it on FC5 using yum, and it would appear to be 
version -004 as it is in directory /usr/share/doc/bcm43xx-fwcutter-004.

First of my problems is that the md5sums on many of the links in the 
README file do not agree with the files downloaded from the listed URLs 
and extracting files from them fails. I also tried extracting from the 
file that Gateway uses for my system (a Gateway notebook, model MX6440 
with a Airforce One 54g card apparently using a BCM4318 chip) but that 
also failed with the md5sum problem.

I was able to extract an older version of bcmwl5.sys , version 3.20.23.0 
but with many dire warnings, viz.,

    extracting bcm43xx_microcode2.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_microcode4.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_microcode5.fw ...

    *****: Sorry, it's not posible to extract "bcm43xx_microcode11.fw".

    *****: Extracting firmware from an old driver is bad. Choose a more
    recent one.

    *****: Luckily bcm43xx driver doesn't include microcode11 uploads at
    the moment.

    *****: But this can be added in the future...

    extracting bcm43xx_pcm4.fw ...

    *****: Sorry, it's not posible to extract "bcm43xx_pcm5.fw".

    *****: Extracting firmware from an old driver is bad. Choose a more
    recent one.

    *****: bcm43xx driver will not work with with core revision 5 or higher.

    extracting bcm43xx_initval01.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval02.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval03.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval04.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval05.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval06.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval07.fw ...

    *****: Sorry, initval08 is not available in driver file "bcmwl5.sys".

    *****: Extracting firmware from an old driver is bad. Choose a more
    recent one.

    *****: Luckily bcm43xx driver doesn't include initval08 uploads at
    the moment.

    *****: But this can be added in the future...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval09.fw ...

    extracting bcm43xx_initval10.fw ...

When I issued modprobe bcm43xx, it loaded. I then configured eth1 using 
ifconfig and found after issueing ifconfig -a, it showed eth1 as having 
an address of 172.16.5.38 and a HW address of 00:14:!5:85:4E:D5.

However iwconfig eth1 shows an invalid access point, and I am unable to 
assign one using iwconfig with the ap switch set to the above mac address.

Could you advise me on (1) how to get a later file for extraction of the 
driver (if this is necessary) and (2) why I am unable to bind eth1 to an 
access point?

Thanx.

BOF

 






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