IAtkos is not as compatible with the BCM4318 as Jas. Jas has specific instructions for the Dell Inspiron B130. But, Jas will take a few more days if not a week to download. IAtkos recognizes networks but in-spite of my best efforts, the signal is weak and flitty. Further trouble became apparent to me concerning the unique keyboard of the B130. I could re-keymap it to a degree, but certain functions depicted on the keys were unassignable. So, I went back to Linux. I sought out a listing of supported USB wifi cards. I priced them and my coworker gave me a thumbs up on whatever I thought needed to be done. She didn't want the Windows system anymore and trusted me to make the most financially sound judgment on top of giving her a more stable system. Long story short, I ended up getting the Belkin Wireless G USB (BLKWGU). This thing isn't natively supported, but with ten minutes of installing and NDiswrapping, it was up and running. Even though it's only G, this card is quick. Simple pages load immediately from my ClearWire router and can scan and hook up to other networks around from the toolbar. Ubuntu Hardy Heron was already scanning half tone out of the box, but with NDiswrapper and the Windows driver, BLKWGU was the way to go.

The question of BCM4318 compatibility is still out for others as well. If you happen to know how to hack the driver to run the radio freq transmitter/receiver please post a completed source on the Linux forums. People like me would greatly appreciate it for future reference, seeing as even the most advanced versions of the bcm43xx driver don't work with this specific chipset.

The reason I went out and bought new hardware, rather than continue for years to toil away at the BCM4318 is, well she asked about her computer again. I felt bad enough, seeing as I've NEVER had such trouble before. The closest thing to this was the two WEEKS I spent devoting all my scarce free-time during Freshman year recovering lost data from an archaic laptop (which I brought back to usable for another five years) and a junked HD on an old PC (which didn't survive a moment without my PowerBook G3). Two weeks I spent pulling data from one onto disks, and flagging corrupt sectors manually on the other (thank God for my Uncle's patience on the phone for that one). It took a day (well, four hours) and a half (another two hours) for my Uncle to explain enough to me to understand how an HD worked on a Newton and how to manipulate partitions so it wouldn't hit the physically damaged areas of the HD (Coca-cola). Then I was off (my rocker). In brief, the BCM4318 has been the single most frustrating thing I've ever encountered in computing over the last, well... I learned DOS on a Tandy 1000 from the other Uncle. Self-taught Linux and mostly self-taught Apple (Mac OS 6.1+, my Uncle taught me Mac OS (1-6), so that's saying quite a bit. WinNT 3.1 would have been fine if they... I'm getting off topic.

The point of the matter is, the Dell Inspiron B130 is going home today and I'm not satisfied with it. This is like my senior thesis meeting (the 3rd draft):

I walked into Mr. Shea's office with a folder. In the folder contained 60 pages of my soul. No quotes written out, just referenced. No bibliography, that was in my hand. 60 pages. He never read it. His hand came down upon the folder and he said, in his naturally loud, godlike, distinct voice, "Twenty! ...Minimum and MAXIMUM!" I'm still glad he didn't open it, just so that he never realized that it was in 10 point Times New Roman, rather than Courier New 12, which he specified. Single-spaced, versus double. I would have had a desk shoved side-ways down my throat. A very large, hefty, desk. Even then, I went back to my room in defeat, clicked on my thesis and deleted it. I was enraged. I had two weeks to rewrite this thing I had set loose and, no matter how highly he praised me about what I did, I can't help but feel I failed.The only thing which brightens my mood about it was Comps. The comprehensive tests are the pinnacle of the Thomas More College career. A single, defining, test on everything you learned in the past four years. I didn't study more than a pittance of hours. I sat on the smoking porch with two fellow senior philosophy majors and bullshitted with them. I was tipsy and still authoritative on the material. Certainly, I had spent too much time learning over those four years to forget a syllable of what I knew. I only had one problem left...

I digress. I wanted to illustrate, breifly, that the BCM4318 must be broken. And that I could not do it under the time-constraints given to me. After the CEOs are done getting sued, imprisoned and tried, they should all be forced to toss a vagrent's salad for the BCM 4318. RF Wifi is a great idea mass-scale, but only on a chipset is sad, frustrating and finally failure. Fuck you Broadcom. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Kompilacja przebiegła bez problemu, zatem czas sprawdzić to "cudo".
Okazuje się, że dmesg informuje mnie, iż mam starą wersję firmware, podając jednocześnie że najnowsza wersja to 4 ;). Wszystko byłoby ok, gdyby nie fakt, iż właśnie takową posiadałem, tzn 4.80.53.0. Dla pewności sprawdziłem na stronie linuxwireless, jak to wygląda.  Stwierdziłem, że w takiej sytuacji sprawdzę jeszcze wersję 4.150.10.5 firmware., choć ta którą mam winna być w porządku. Tym razem wszystko ok- tzn. dmesg nie informuje mnie na temat złej wersji firmware.

Po załadowaniu modułu połączyłem się iwconfig ze swoją siecią- pokazuje poprawny essid i key WEP jednakże bez wskazań jakości połączenia. No nic, może tak ma być...
dcpcd wlan0- po bardzo długim czasie okazuje się, że nie pobiera danych z dhcpd.

Kolejnym razem zrobiłem trochę inaczej, gdyż po załadowaniu modułu b43 postawiłem ręcznie interfejs (ifconfig wlan0 up), następnie iwconfig (+ opcje) i w tym momencie dopiero dhcpcd wlan0 i... tym razem działa ok.
Trochę dziwnie to wygląda ;). Nie wiem czego to wina, być może tego że mimo wszystko sprawdzam na kernelu w wersji rc.

No to znów come back do ndiswrappera :)

Po jakimś czasie jednak uruchomiłem znów 2.6.24, gdyż były problemy z suspend- zdarzyło się że nie udało się "wrócić" ;)

W dalszym ciągu jest problem z wstawaniem interfejsu i jego domyślnym rate, który jest ustawiany na 1Mb/s. Zmiana na wyższy nie przysparza żadnych problemów- wszystko działa poprawnie. Również niezmienna jest kwestia wyładowania modułu-trwa to bardzo długo. W przypadku ponownego załadowania modułu, nie zawsze udaje się nawiązać połęczenie z AP- przeważnie za 2-3 razem.

Zaobserwowałem dziwne zachowanie, dotyczące bardzo częstych zmian w poziomie jakości połączenia. Link Quality potrafi zmieniać się w ciągu ok 2-3 sekund przynajmniej kilka razy. Niejednokrotnie różnica wynosiła 20%. Jednocześnie nie zauważyłem, aby wpływało to w jakiś sposób na działanie internetu. Wygląda na to, że w przypadku modułu b43, karta jest bardziej czuła na czynniki wpływające na zmiany w jakości połączenia, tudzież sam sterownik po prostu jest bardziej "nadgorliwy" i ma inny interwał w sprawdzaniu poziomu sygnału. Innych zauważalnych rzeczy póki co nie ma. Poużywam sobie go trochę dłużej, to może coś się jeszcze znajdzie, wtedy dopiszę zmiany do tego posta. Na razie działa poprawnie.

Ale do meritum posta...
Okazuje się, że idzie ku lepszemu :).

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43Powstał jakiś czas temu nowy projekt modułu- b43.
Co prawda dalej niezbędny jest firmware do uzycia tego modułu, ale biorąc pod uwagę ilość zmian widocznych w changelogu kernela (od 2.6.24-rc1) można mieć zasadną nadzieję, że już wkrótce będzie można używać tej karty w normalny sposób.
Potestuję chwilę ten moduł, zobaczymy co w trawie piszczy.

* Let's disable the native Ubuntu driver. Type this in a terminal:

gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and insert at the very end of the file:

# buggy broadcom wireless driver
blacklist bcm43xx

* Next, do this in a terminal:

sudo rmmod bcm43xx

* Now, let's download and install the windows driver for the wireless card. You have to download it from the Dell support website. Click here to download it.

Or you can use the direct link to the executable:
http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R140747.EXE

Since it's a windows self-extracting executable, you need wine to use it:

sudo apt-get install wine

then:

wine <path_to_R140747.EXE>

Replace <path_to_R140747.EXE> with the actual physical path to the file you downloaded from the Dell support website. Follow the instructions and extract the files to a folder of your choice. Alternatively, you could extract the files on a windows machine and copy them over to your ubuntu system.

* Now, let's install ndiswrapper. We need it to load the windows driver.

sudo aptitude install ndisgtk ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

* Let's install the windows driver:

sudo ndiswrapper -i <location_of_bcmwl5.inf_file>

Replace <location_of_bcmwl5.inf_file> with the path to the bcmwl5.inf file you extracted earlier.

* Let's make sure the driver is installed:

sudo ndiswrapper -l

You should get something like this:

bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

* Now we need to set up ndiswrapper to load our new driver automatically:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

and add a new line that says:

ndiswrapper

That's it, restart your laptop. During the restart, the wiFI LED should light up. If it doesn't, try the Fn + F2 key combination. After the reboot, configure your network settings:

System -> Administration -> Networking

Enable the wireless connection and tinker with the connection settings if you need to. You may have to  disable the wired connection because wireless and wired connections may not work simultaneously - your mileage may vary in this regard.

Note:
It seems Network Manager prevents the card from connecting to detected wireless networks. I advise you to remove it if you can detect wireless networks but cannot connect to them. To do this, type the following in a terminal:

sudo apt-get --purge remove network-manager network-manager-gnome

Alternatively, you can open Synaptic and remove these two packages.
* Summary:
1.) Install ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get install ndisgtk ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

2.) Install the windows wireless driver
sudo ndiswrapper -i <location_of_bcmwl5.inf_file>

Remember to replace <location_of_bcmwl5.inf_file> with the actual path to the location of the bcmwl5.inf file

3,) Make sure the card has been detected and installed
ndiswrapper -l

4.) Disable the native ubuntu wireless driver
gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Insert at the very end of the file:

# buggy broadcom wireless driver
blacklist bcm43xx

5.) Remove Network Manager if it gives you problems
sudo apt-get --purge remove network-manager network-manager-gnome

Reboot

You wireless card should be working flawlessly now.

Cheers,
Odzangba

Cheers,
Odzangba