[CentOS] Dell Wireless WLAN Card Utility - mini-pci wireless card 1390

Andrew Allen andy.allen at virgin.net
Fri Nov 30 20:57:57 UTC 2007


On Mon, 2007-11-19 at 15:52 -0600, Barry Brimer wrote:
> Quoting Andrew Allen <andy.allen at virgin.net>:
> 
> > On Sun, 2007-11-18 at 19:41 -0600, Barry Brimer wrote:
> >
> > > I have a Dell laptop that I believe has the same card.  The CentOS 5
> > > kernel did not appear to support it, but the RHEL 5.1 (and subsequently
> > > upon its release) the CentOS 5.1 kernel does support it.  You will need to
> > > drop the firmware into /lib/firmware .. I believe this is a bcm43xx card.
> > >
> > > Barry
> >
> > Thanks Barry,
> > In view of what you say about CentOS 5.1 supporting this card, I think
> > I'm going to wait until it's released - hope that won't be too long. Any
> > other possible solutions (eg like using ndiswrapper) look far too
> > complicated for a linux newbie like me!  I hope that I'll be able to
> > update the kernel without having to do a complete re-install. In the
> > meantime I'm just going to have to use MS Windows XP (I have dual-boot
> > on this laptop) for any wireless networking.
> 
> I was using ndiswrapper for this card until RHEL 5.1's kernel picked it up.  I
> noticed that it now found an 'eth1' interface that didn't exist before. 
> ndiswrapper does work, but has somewhat occasional crashes most likely due to
> RHEL's 4k stack size that is not really compatible with ndiswrapper.  I agree,
> you should wait until the CentOS 5.1 kernel comes out because assuming you and
> I have the same card, all you need is the firmware .. and it will work without
> further issue.
> 
> Barry
> 
> 
I've now upgraded the kernel to CentOS 2.6.18-8.1.15.e15, so assume my
OS is now effectively CentOS 5.1. However, I'm afraid I'm still at a bit
of a loss as to how it supports my Dell laptop wireless card (bcm43xx
card?), as it's still not listed in the list of supported adapters in
Network Config. Can anybody please suggest where I go from here?

Thanks,
Andy 
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