truemobile 1300 in Linux

Why does Dell use Broadcom? They are the most unsupportive company when it comes to wireless network cards in Linux... it is annoying as heck!

 

Yup, there is no doubt that broadcom suc as far as open standards and stuff go..

All hope is not lost though, a bunch of intrepid code warriors at sourceforge are reverse engineering the windows drivers.
Hopefully we will have a working driver soon.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-bcom4301/

I'd rather see broadcom help or go out of business though.

Be sure to sign the petition to broadcom :

http://www.petitiononline.com/BCM4301/petition.html

They will changee their tune fast enough if they get an idea of how many people hate them for it.
(or if Dell goes back to their past decision to support linux again.)

rgds

Franki

yeah. it doesn't look like that sourceforge project is going anywhere... on the website it says the beginning date was march and on that date they said it would likely take a few weeks.... its been a long time since March and nothing has happened yet. Not even any posts on the status.

Well, we need to give them incourangement then...

heck, if you could write device drivers in perl, I'd offer my help.. but my c coding skills are pretty sad..
I might join their list and offer any help I can..

can't hurt.
If enough people show an interest, it can have a big motivational benefit.. and also might make broadcom consider helping..
after all, if a bad linux driver is out there, it will hurt public opinion of them.


rgds

Franki

FYI, Here is some info on getting various items in the Dell laptops working under linux.

Modem Driver:
http://65.70.147.202:8080/gromitkc/broadcom/bcm421x.html

True mobile wireless:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=664153&highlight=%2Btruemobile+%2Blinux

Apparently it works...

hope that helps.

rgds

Franki

The link you provided to the thread related to the Truemobile 1300 card is in fact about the Broadcom ethernet card, so nothing about native drivers for the 1300 wireless card.

Here are some quotes from that page:

Yes I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 working under linux using Knoppix with a dell truemobile 1300 54G wireless card

True there are no support drivers cause of the broadcom chipset and they haven't supported it yet but my buddie came and got mine working tweaking the kernal

Just a bit of information for you

Broadcom BCM4306/BCM2050 chipset is the chipset to the wireless card if you want your lan card to work if you haven't got that working

Download and install the kernel-source-2.4.20 package.
Download the driver sources from the ASUS web site or leo.org.
Unpack, go into the directory where the Linux sources are and give the command 'make', which builds the driver.
Copy bcm4400.o into /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/net
Give the command insmod bcm4400, and lo and behold, it worked!
Edited /etc/modules.conf to make it load on boot.

And:

Got it

You need following driver:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal...00-2.0.0.tar.gz
Compile the module, and put it at the right place, in the kernel modules tree (e.g. /lib/modules/2.4.21/kernel/driver/net).
Then add the following line to your /etc/modules.conf:
-------/etc/modules.conf--
...
alias eth0 bcm4400
-------------------------------
Thus, the module gets loaded as you start the eth0 network interface ( use ifconfig )


Aparently they have gotten the TM1300 working....

One last option you have:

http://www.linuxant.com/company/press_dldr.php?PHPSESSID=f08c04d396b5354c36c06d56d62173c0

This one seems to be a module that uses the windows driver to get it working in linux..


good luck


rgds

Franki

The file at http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal...00-2.0.0.tar.gz is a driver for the ethernet Broadcom BCM4400 cards series. I've personally compiled that driver to enable the ethernet card under RedHat 9. You don't need that driver if you run a 2.6.x kernel because now it is included in mainstream kernels.

In that driver there is nothing about wireles cards, you can read the sources if you don't trust me. But, please don't point people to install that driver for wireless support.

The only option to enable the TM1300 card under Linux rigth now is the linuxant.com solution.

Hi, I just got the linuxant.com driver working under RedHat 9 with a TrueMobile 1400 on an Inspiron 5150.

Yeah finally some workaround for those none-driver providing vendors - checkout some more about the Linuxant DriverLoader here...

We don't want to see your spam... just goto www.linuxant.com

Of course, its not even worth it now... cuz you have to pay $19.99 to get a license for the software after the trial ends... your best bet is to see how the NDISWrapper project comes along... I hear it already works but there are some bugs. You can check that out at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

How can a person enable WEP with this Linuxant driver. I have a
DLink DI 624 2.4 gz 802.11g router and i don't know where to put the
encryption key. Anyone have any luck? I'm feeling naked and exposed!

I cant' speak of the linuxant driver cos I'm using the free sourceforge ndiswrapper driver loader that works the same way..

I'm using full WEP, and also Mac address filtering and no card that doesn't already know the SID is allowed on either..

I just added the WEP/MAC/SSID details the same way you do for any natively supported linux wireless driver, and it worked fine for me.

rgds

Franki

we're not all linux gods...what is the path to the place where i put in the key?