Broadcom bcm43xx wireless driver [beta]

[orbecb]

Cheers mcsmart, Wi Fi working at last.

 

My PCI card is BCM4306 (0x14E4,0x120F) recognized as an AirPort Extreme.

 

After installing your fix I ran Airport update & found the card was no longer recognised but I ran your fix again & now its working spot on on. Thanks again. OrbecB - Oh & its Uphuck 10.4.9

[Xenn0X]

my card works natively but installed this to test and works fine.

Jul 18 21:00:06 localhost kernel[0]: wl0: Broadcom BCM4312 802.11 Wireless Controller

[davim]

MCSMART,

 

I updated my Kalyway 10.5.2 system with the Time Machine and Airport update like you said before installing the Broadcom 43xx package and it bricked my system. It just keep rebooting. How can I restore the kernel from the oringinal Kalyway 10.5.2 DVD rather than doing a clean install? Thanks

 

DAVIM

[BigPimpin]

It's not bricked. It's only "bricked" if it takes some sort of hardware intervention to fix it. A brick is a useless hunk of rock. As long as you can still re-install or recover your OS then it's definitely not bricked.

[AustinMac]

I updated my Kalyway 10.5.2 system up to 10.5.3 with Mysticus C's updater and then used Apple's 10.5.4 updater. Unfortunately, my Broadcom 4329 wireless (Linksys WMP300N PCI board) no longer works. I have tried everything in this thread to get it alive and kicking again, but no dice. The wireless does not show up in the NetworkInterfaces.plist file. It certainly appears I have the AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext setup properly (and in the right location) but at this point I've hit a brick wall as to how to proceed. I posted more information here:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=116920

 

I can provide additional information as needed and I appreciate any help and/or insight.

 

Thanks!

 

..Al

[scharli]

Well im using a Dell 1525 and i beleve we have the same wireless card. i just ran the script and it works fine now. make sure that leapord actually sees an airport before u run it. and also make sure it is turned on.

I have also a Dell 1525. Unfortunately I'm not able to get my wireless card working. How did you manage to get it working? How have you installed OSX, which version. I've installed with Kalyway 10.5.2.. My system doesn't see any airport interface, not even after the bcm -enabler. How did you edit the enabler exactly? Thank for any suggestions! In the HCL 10.5.2 there are two posts of success with the dell wireless 1395.

[scharli]

Update: Success!! The 1395 in my Dell 1525 is now recognized as Airport! You have to edit the script for the 1395:

 

for the chipset add:

 

echo "- Broadcom BCM4310 802.11 a/g Wireless LAN"

 

for the device id add:

 

<string>pci14e4,4315</string>

 

After applying the edited script and restarting the dell 1395 showed up as airport.

 

Many thanks to mcsmart for the script!!

[psmorgan]

I understand these drivers were built by Apple for Leopard and therefore they shouldn't have connection drops.. but has anyone experienced them as well as me?

[mcsmart]

Update: Success!! The 1395 in my Dell 1525 is now recognized as Airport! You have to edit the script for the 1395:

Cool, but what do you mean by 1395? And the device id you posted is already in the script.

 

I've just added some more device ids (also the 4310).

 

- mcsmart

[MX5]

I have the Dell Truemobile 1370 (BCM 4318) which I just received because I replaced my intel pro 2200bg card. I tried all your files, but I still dont see any airport cards in my system. Any help?

[Espionage724]

Broadcom 4318 question

 

Does this driver make the light on the WLAN actually stay solid during data transfer? The one I have now (which worked perfectly right after install with iATKOS 10.5.4 DVD) has a blinking light during data transfer. The latest windows drivers keep it solid. Maybe there is an option for this?

[magnat2]

does anyone know how to get broadcom 4311 to be recognized as an real airport not as third party airport? Thank you!

[Rawbreed]

I have a confirmed working adapter using this modified Broadcom driver. I have a G5 running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and I went to Best Buy to purchase a Dynex Wireless PCI Adapter DX-BGDTC for 29.99. After I ran a sudo install in Terminal and installed the hardware the OS recognized the card just as if it were an airport card. The problem I has having was the card was erratic and hopped from "Connection Timeout" to "No Connection" to "Connection". Even when I tried to surf during the Green "Connection" in the Network Panel The connection was really REALLY SLOW!. I did just about everything I could do to make sure the card would work with my G5 and I was getting nowhere. I figured maybe I could tweak my Linksys WRT54G wireless router because I figured the card and the router were'nt connecting correctly. I dialed up my router's IP and made changes to my avanced wireless settings like moving my transfer rate to lower numbers and turning on frame burst ect....long story short I went a whole day tinkering with the card and the router and I was getting nowhere. I figured as a last step I would read the manual to the card to see if theres anything I was missing. Everything looked standard except one part of the manual that dawned on me. The manual clearly stated that Dynex wireless adapters are made to work in sync with Dynex wireless routers. The defaulted channel on their routers is channel 11. The defaulted channel on my Linsys wireless router is channel 6. I made the necessary changes according to Dynex specs and changed the channel of the router to 11. When I went to go surfing the adapter worked flawlessly without a hitch. As a general lesson I urgently ask ppl that you PLEASE READ YOUR ADAPTER'S MANUAL. If you are having connection issues more than likely your manual can point you in the right direction. If you want to get the same setup I had you can go to best buy and purchase a Dynex DX-BGDTCfor 29.99. My chipset was Broadcom and the model was BCM4318. Change the router to channel 11 (Dynex Specs) and you'll be surfing in no time!

[remoteosx86]

I run the script, but unfortunately, it didn't work.

My wireless is Broadcom Bcm 4310.

Nothing came up as an airport, the patch was done correctly though.

Thank you mcsmart for your effort and your patience.

 

 

I run the script, but unfortunately, it didn't work.

My wireless is Broadcom Bcm 4310.

Nothing came up as an airport, the patch was done correctly though.

Thank you mcsmart for your effort and your patience.

[mcsmart]

The one I have now (which worked perfectly right after install with iATKOS 10.5.4 DVD) has a blinking light during data transfer. The latest windows drivers keep it solid. Maybe there is an option for this?

You could ask Apple if they'll support your WLAN LED

But seriously, you should be happy if your wireless LAN is working in the first place, since many users cannot get it to work. Don't bother about stupid toys like LEDs - the core stuff is important.

If you want better hardware support: use Linux or Win***s.

 

- mcsmart

[Guest BuildSmart]

Getting hung up on whether the LED works or not is a waste of time and energy in my opinion, this is why there is the airport icon in the task bar, it acts as the LED and places it in a place that is far easier to observe than looking at the back of the computer to see if you have a connection.

 

Baring this, there are several issues that prevent a wireless adapter from functioning properly or being recognized.

 

One is the PCI classification, if it's 0200 then the airport software wont be able to properly manage the card, the other is the Product and Vendor ID's are always a problem because this is how a card is recognized by the apple driver.

 

Because you have a bcm4318 from one OEM manufacturer, it may use a different classification and ID's in another OEM manufacturers card but the cards are identical right down to the markings on the PCB.

 

If you locate and install the PCITools found in XLabs you can isolate the exact ID's of the installed card by issuing "lspci -nnv" and it will also provide you with the all ID's including the subsystem ID's.

 

Information of importance:

04:02.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)

 

This can be translated to: (see Proposed Method for better solution)

<string>pci14e4,4318</string>

 

Very few Broadcom cards are recognized as real apple AirPort Extreme cards just by adding the ID to the Info.plist, actually I haven't come across one yet that does yet people make this claim and I have tested the cards they claim to be using and they have not reported as such.

 

If you have access to a ubuntu installation you can rebrand the b/g and a/b/g cards provided you know what to change them too and they work flawlessly after that.

 

I have done this with Dynex, D-Link, HP, NetGear and LinkSYS cards with good success.

 

For 11a/b/g laptop miniPCI cards (not miniPCIe) I exclusively use the Dell DW1470 (BCM4309KFB) and rebrand accordingly (less than $20.00 on fleabay), once rebranded you no longer have to edit any files, the card works flawlessly and is supported natively.

 

You can even purchase a PCI to miniPCI adapter and use the card in a desktop computer that has an empty PCI slot and enjoy the benefit of supported wireless.

 

For 11a/b/g laptop miniPCIe cards (not miniPCI)you can use the Dell DW1490.

 

 

 

What I don't understand is why you have to add a million ID's to get them working?

 

I would have thought that the people thinking of these modifications and patches would know how to match the device based on it's classification and would remove the need to patch for each and every card out there.

 

I would think that the following "Proposed Method" substitution is a far better and more intelligent solution.

 

Current Method:

		<key>Broadcom 802.11 PCI</key>
	<dict>
		<key>APRoamTrigger</key>
		<integer>-91</integer>
		<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
		<string>com.apple.driver.AirPortBrcm43xx</string>
		<key>IOClass</key>
		<string>AirPort_Brcm43xx</string>
		<key>IOMatchCategory</key>
		<string>IODefaultMatchCategory</string>
		<key>IONameMatch</key>
		<array>
			<string>pci106b,4e</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4311</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4312</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4313</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4318</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4319</string>
			<string>pci14e4,431a</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4320</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4324</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4325</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4328</string>
			<string>pci14e4,4329</string>
			<string>pci14e4,432a</string>
			<string>pci14e4,432b</string>
			<string>pci14e4,432c</string>
			<string>pci14e4,432d</string>
		</array>
		<key>IOProviderClass</key>
		<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
	</dict>

 

Proposed Method:

		<key>Broadcom 802.11 PCI</key>
	<dict>
		<key>APRoamTrigger</key>
		<integer>-91</integer>
		<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
		<string>com.apple.driver.AirPortBrcm43xx</string>
		<key>IOClass</key>
		<string>AirPort_Brcm43xx</string>
		<key>IOMatchCategory</key>
		<string>IODefaultMatchCategory</string>
		<key>IOPCIClassMatch</key>
		<string>0x02800000&0xffff0000</string>
		<key>IOPCIMatch</key>
		<string>0x430014e4&0xff00ffff</string>
		<key>IOProviderClass</key>
		<string>IOPCIDevice</string>
	</dict>

 

 

Explanation:

• examine all cards that are assigned 0280 which are alternate network controllers (not ethernet).
  
• match all Broadcom ID's of these alternate network cards.
  

This would make all Broadcom wireless cards be recognized out of the box and wouldn't interfere with Broadcom Ethernet adapters reducing the amount of work required by the end user to get the card recognized.

 

Now, there is the odd OEM that has classified their cards as 0200, this should be changed to 0280, it will not affect the performance or use of the card, it will allow it to be properly recognized and allow it to be managed by the airport software which is another issue preventing some people from using their cards.

[shawmishrak]

I understand these drivers were built by Apple for Leopard and therefore they shouldn't have connection drops.. but has anyone experienced them as well as me?

 

I'm curious about this as well. I just tried this script with a Linksys WMP54GS PCI card. Everything works fine with great speed for awhile, but large downloads seem to kill the connection. For instance, downloading Xcode always kills the wireless connection after a few hundred megabytes. The connection is dropped, and the wireless card stops working. I cannot reconnect to any access points until I restart the computer.

 

Any ideas?

 

This is with a fresh install of Kalyway 10.5.2, by the way.

[whison]

bcm4310, 14e4, 4315 works well with your great help. Thanks a lot

 

but is there any news for bcm5906M? i can't go wireless all the time.....

[Guest BuildSmart]

It appears that everyone doesn't understand that the quick fix of adding the ID's of the wireless adapter to the driver while it does make the card work, it does not enable features and functionalities only available to devices bearing the Apple subsystem ID's because it uses the generic portions of the drivers.

 

A basic example of this is the LED, using the generic portion of the driver supplied in the apple driver allows the card to manage the LED by it's default assigned behavior, this could be always on, on when connected, on during reception, on during transmission, on during reception and transmission or off and in most cases it's off.

 

An Apple ID'd device will have the LED on and will flash during transmission/reception of data or on during a connection and these are the way in which apple has programmed the LED behavior.

 

If your device doesn't contain the Apple ID's you wont get support for TC and your support of TM over wireless will be limited.

 

If you don't have any intensions of streaming audio of video usage or you don't plan on using a TC or advance features of TM then using the generic driver is acceptable and the System Profiler report of a "Third Party Wireless" has little meaning other than letting you know it's not a fully supported device.

 

If you know the card you have uses the same chipset as the apple card it would make sense to take the time to rebrand the card and have it work properly, if the chipset is close it may still work but the LED may not work properly and that is OK, it's only an idiot light.

 

If you want to use an A/B/G card I recommend the Dell DW1470 for miniPCI cards as these cards use the exact same chipset as the apple cards.

 

Myself I go the extra mile when rebranding and replace vendor labels with custom labels identifying the device as an 100% Apple Airport Extreme compatible device, provide windows drivers on real printed on CD's (not CD-R's) and as of last week new packaging reflecting the device enclosed.

 

Rebranding the card does have some drawbacks, if you continue to use the card with windows you must obtain a driver that the rebranded card can use, I was fortunate in this area as I obtained WHQL drivers from Broadcom as an OEM product vendor so the nice fancy printed on CD's my customers get looks more attractive than buying something else from someone else who sends a driver on a CD-R or provides a link for a driver that might be compatible but is only available in 32-bit or doesn't support your particular version of Windows.

 

Also one more thing to note, not all cards seem to support the QOS protocol and some do not support WPA2 but a router assigned a WPA2 key will allow a connection of WEP-AES for backward compatibility.

 

Now, you may find a wireless card that works as a third part but doesn't work after rebranding and this is usually the firmware in the card, an example of this is the Dynex PCI wireless adapter part number DX-WGPDTC, some work after rebranding while others don't, the ones that don't the fix is to upload the latest firmware to the PCI card and then rebrand the card and then it works as expected.

 

There shouldn't be any reason why you need to change the vendor or product ID of a Broadcom based card but you may have to change the pci device class since some are programmed as 0200 which is an ethernet adapter and all apple wireless network devices are programmed as 0280.

 

In other threads I have explained the process of rebranding and this is now fairly simple in OS's like Ubuntu 8.04 for the B/G and A/B/G cards, they did have a tentative release to support the N cards but they ran into issues and release has been delayed but the software is still being worked on.

 

People asked me to help make an OSX application solution and while I agreed to help, no one interested in the solution was interested on working on the project, they just wanted an OSX solution so the project never made it off the ground.

 

Simply put, if anyone has the time to write a terminal application that will read and display the device configuration/information I will donate the write routines and provide the code to support the 11N based cards which would make life much easier on everyone who wants to obtain a properly supported native wireless adapter, this can be done in so many safe ways such as reading a plist file to obtain ID's of devices for each type and auto rebrand it so you can't program the wrong information into it cause too many noobs would brick their cards if some kind of protection isn't provided.

 

You are welcome to contact me for assistance on writing the application but don't contact me asking me how to perform the task in OSX if an application is not publicly available for OSX, I really don't have the patience (or interest) to teach anyone what they need to know to achieve the goal.

[MX5]

Soo...basically if I have OSX and a dell truemobile which is a bcm 4318 card, and isn't being recognized by the drivers provided already...i'm SOL?

[Guest BuildSmart]

Soo...basically if I have OSX and a dell truemobile which is a bcm 4318 card, and isn't being recognized by the drivers provided already...i'm SOL?

No, your not SOL, I'd wonder why it's not being recognized since the basic card ID's are correct.

 

You've probably mucked with the Extensions so much that it may never work, it's hard to say cause I have no clue what you've already done at this point.

 

If you have the DW1470 is should be recognized as an AirPort (third part) OOB.

 

Rebranding is the only solution to the true AirPort dilemma because the DW1470 is the exact same chipset used in the apple card (I've rebranded many of these).

[manx86]

Ok, i have HP dv2220us w/ BCM 4321, tried this patch, but still is being recognized as 3rd party airport card.

 

Anyone know how to fix this? I cannot get the wired LAN to work either. Please someone be kind and help me get either the wired LAN to work, or the WLAN, both would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

using 10.5.2 Leo4all V3 w/ nForce driver and broadcom driver from install. I'm willing to re-install if i was supposed to select something else. Please help

[zzzing]

...

If you locate and install the PCITools found in XLabs you can isolate the exact ID's of the installed card by issuing "lspci -nnv" and it will also provide you with the all ID's including the subsystem ID's.

...

Proposed Method:

		<key>Broadcom 802.11 PCI</key>
	 <dict>
		 <key>APRoamTrigger</key>
		 <integer>-91</integer>
		 <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
		 <string>com.apple.driver.AirPortBrcm43xx</string>
		 <key>IOClass</key>
		 <string>AirPort_Brcm43xx</string>
		 <key>IOMatchCategory</key>
		 <string>IODefaultMatchCategory</string>
		 <key>IOPCIClassMatch</key>
		 <string>0x02800000&0xffff0000</string>
		 <key>IOPCIMatch</key>
		 <string>0x430014e4&0xff00ffff</string>
		 <key>IOProviderClass</key>
		 <string>IOPCIDevice</string>
	 </dict>

...

 

I've checked the WLAN with lspci in my machine, HP Presario C300.

The result is

06:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI [14e4:4311] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:1364]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [58] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Capabilities: [d0] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] #14e4

 

I've applied your proposing method and it didn't work for me.

Do you have any more suggestions?

[MX5]

No, your not SOL, I'd wonder why it's not being recognized since the basic card ID's are correct.

 

You've probably mucked with the Extensions so much that it may never work, it's hard to say cause I have no clue what you've already done at this point.

 

If you have the DW1470 is should be recognized as an AirPort (third part) OOB.

 

Rebranding is the only solution to the true AirPort dilemma because the DW1470 is the exact same chipset used in the apple card (I've rebranded many of these).

 

Hmm..thanks. I'm considering wiping the hd and restarting from scratch..

[netkk]

Hi,

my Dell Truemobile 1490 is partially working on 10.5.4

 

I can connect to unsecured networks, but whenever I try WEP secured ones I get an error message and I can't connect.

 

Anyone has this problem too?

 

Please, any help would be appreciated.

 

Thank you in advance.