Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card for Dell Inspiron 1545: How to Drive It!

[max]

On 6/18/14, 11:13 AM, Temlakos wrote:
> Everyone:
>
> I have a three-year-old Dell Inspiron 1545. It came with the Dell 
> Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card.
>
> The current output of lspci -k |grep -iA5 wire gives "Dell Wireless 
> 1397 WLAN Mini-Card" as a subsystem. The relevant kernel module is "ssb."
>
> Currently this card will not connect. Nor can I force it to connect by 
> directly editing the network interface. I've tried several times, but 
> I can't get to a MAC address for it.
>
> What driver(s) or other kernel module(s) should I install, and where 
> can I get them?
>
> Broadcom has a 32-bit and a 64-bit tarball for what they say is a 
> driver for this card. Should I install that on my system?
>
> Please advise. It seems a shame to operate any laptop without wireless 
> connectivity.
>
> Temlakos

  In my experience most Dell branded wireless cards have a broadcom 
chipset.