(Solved) Can't get wireless working bcm4318 ppc

Sathors · n00b Joined: 20 Jan 2014 Posts: 4

Hi all,

I'm currently trying to get the wireless working on a powerpc macmini of late 2005.
The wireless card is a Broadcom corporation bcm4318 [airforce one 54g] 802.11g wireless lan controller (rev 02).

iwconfig tells me that no interface has a wireless extension.

I have installed b43-firmware, and then I tried using fwcutter myself, still no wireless extension.

b43 is loaded as a module.

It seems that the b43 I'm using now doesn't work, because a iwlist wlan0 scanning gives me :
wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning

and a iwconfig wlan0 essid essid_ex gives me :
set failed on device wlan0 ; operation not supported

I've seen on the web people switching to broadcom-sta (wl module) or using ndiswrapper.
The thing is that neither of these two packages works on the ppc architecture.

So right now I don't have a clue on what I can do to solve this problem.

Thanks for your help !

gentoolinja · n00b Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 13

gentoolinja · n00b Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 13

Also check my own post: DOCUMENTING MY MINIMAL GENTOO INSTALLATION
I'm also trying... goodluck.

Sathors · n00b Joined: 20 Jan 2014 Posts: 4

Well, to begin with, sorry not to have answered earlier, but I also have a problem with X crashing, so getting online is difficult.

Now it's working. I only had to add somemodules in the kernel, like wext for example, but other things as well, so I'm not sure of what helped me.
After building this module I could see the wireless extension, as well as setting essid and stuff.
So now everything is working.

Thanks for your help though.

Sathors