[CS-FSLUG] laptop wifi won't turn on.

[Eduardo Sanchez]

Quoting Davidm at hisfeet.net:
> I recently installed a new hard drive in my laptop, and a new operating
> system.
> The laptop is a compaq v2000 series with a Broadcom BCM4318 chipset for
> the wireless. The OS is:  vmlinuz-2.6.27-1-mepis64.
>
> Wireless works fine with the old instalation, but the new one won't even
> recognize that there is a wireless device - or rather, it finds and
> identifies the device when I run the command: "lspci", but it won't turn
> the divice on at boot, and I can't figure out how to turn it on.
>
> Can someone point me to a simple tutorial on the subject? What I have
> found on the net so far is way beyond my understanding, and most of it
> might not be applicable, because it is refering to other operating
> systems.
>
> Dave McMullen

Dave, I suspect you need to load the Broadcom firmware into your new  
OS installation. You should go to:

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

and then proceed to the heading "Device Firmware / Firmware  
Installation". Your computer must be able to compile software (i.e.,  
you must have devel packages installed).

By all means, don't be scared by the language. Simply try to follow  
the instructions. It is a procedure that needs to be performed just  
once, and then forget about it :)

For an account of what I did, check out:

http://shadow.sombragris.org/?p=406

Blessings,


Eduardo