I am very new to the Linux world and I'm trying to figure out how to install drivers for the onboard Broadcom BCM43XX wireless card that came with my notebook (Dell Inspiron 600m w/Centrino). I am trying to get Fedora Core 2 (2.6.8-1.521.stk16) to see the onboard wireless NIC. I want to pay for the driver from .linuxant.com, I've followed the instructions but I'm stuck at getting the MAC address of the wireless adapter. I've downloaded the "DriverLoader" software and tried to get the MAC buy going to //127.0.0.1:18020/ and dldrconfig --info but all I get is "No devices found". I know that Windows will see the device but not work with out the drivers installed but not sure if you can view the MAC, should I be able to do that with Linux? I can get the MAC by re-installing Windows and then re-installing Fedora, I don't think that is the problem. The problem as I see it is that Fedora is not seeing the NIC, thus having the MAC address will not help. You help is appreciated.

TIA

CBurt

What does your Broadcom chip translate to in Dell terms? Is it a TrueMobile 1300 or 1350 or ??? I have an Inspiron 5150 with a TrueMobile 1300 that is running fine with Fedora and the (free) ndiswrapper package. It is surprisingly running well even with the stock 4k stack kernel. I can help you out if you can go that route. I don't know anything about Linuxant though, other than since you pay them a few dollars, there are people on the other end there that will try to help you get going through emails.

The way I am set up, I would type iwconfig to get all the info, including the MAC address, from the card. I didn't need the MAC address to set up the card.

Thanks for the reply, I was able to get the driver installed with the help of Linuxant.com, really take for granted the spoon feeding you get from the MS OS. Anyway, now I have "Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) : SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument." when I activate the wireless card. I have my SSID, channel, and Hex key correct but I think that some hardware setting is the reason for the error message. Oh and it's a Dell True Mobile 2100 mini pci.

CBurt

I am having a similar problem...I down loaded the ndiswrapper and got the True Mobile 1300 driver installed, but when i run iwconfig, i get three ethernet but all say no wireless extension. Any suggestions on getting this to work?

By the way, my system is a Dell D600, with True Mobile 1300 running FC 2 stk16 kernel from linuxant.com