Getting the Broadcom BCM4318 [Airforce One 54g] working under Ubuntu Natty only relies on getting the proper wireless firmware installed. Kudos to NMI who did the in-depth testing on this one.
In Synaptic package manager, install the firmware-b43-installer package. Or, at a terminal, enter the following:
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
This should install the necessary firmware and enable your wireless device within moments.
It sounds like this may be related to the BCM4328 chipset issue.
Please share any feedback you have in the comments below. Thank you.
12 comments
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NMI
May 9, 2011 at 9:43 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I have noticed some issues since I got my Wifi card to be recognized using the above method [Thanks again Mike for posting it].
On said machine, I was now noticing via the wireless a very poor connection to sites. Sites that I know are working fine [my own, here at MikeBeach.org, etc..]
To see if is the machine, or the connection, I disabled the wifi and re-enabled the the lan port [Auto eth0]. Everything appears to be working now at proper speeds. I will continue mucking with this to let you know if I come up with any sort of working solutions.
Mike
May 9, 2011 at 11:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Would you mind uninstalling (purging) all the packages you mentioned and installing them one-at-a-time to see which package gives you a working configuration?
Perhaps having multiple firmware installations is causing performance issues with your card.
NMI
May 9, 2011 at 2:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Got it resolved!
Uninstalled all firmware that was mentioned in the original post.
Installed: b43-fwcutter [ver 1:013-3]
Got an error in the connections drop down “wireless disabled – missing firmware”
Rebooted and
Installed: firmware-b43-installer [ver 4.150.10.5-5]
Seconds after the this second firmware was installed, the wireless card kicked in and found my network and connected.
Sites open up just fine and quickly.
Mike
May 9, 2011 at 2:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Excellent! Thanks for your valuable troubleshooting.
Feel free to comment in anything else that might be helpful :)
eulb
August 24, 2011 at 3:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Great job! You helped me out a bunch.
Spuffler
December 26, 2011 at 8:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Above procedure is not working with Kubuntu 11.10. The package named ‘firmware-b43-installer’ is installed but the card does not work. KDE has a wicd gui app, that doesn’t see a live card. When I insert my SMC 802.11g dongle, that device shows up and starts working. Possibly the newer release of Kubuntu decided that suchlike firmware should be found elsewhere from where APT puts the firmware of the older package?
Mike Beach
May 2, 2012 at 9:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Have you tried the steps related to the BCM4328 issue, also linked above?
Rodrigo
January 15, 2012 at 3:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thank you so much! If I couldnt fix this problem with the wireless I would have had to go back to Windows….. that would have been very tragic
r0g13r
February 13, 2012 at 4:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
thanks, working fine!
wgr
March 13, 2012 at 12:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
thx, worked just fine for my bm 4318 under kubuntu 11.10, and nothing else was needed, the b43 module itself was already loaded automatically from install, but didn’t find any networks..
Mark Ratto
April 3, 2012 at 6:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thank you so much for this post. I really appreciate the information. This worked for my Linksys PCMCIA 2.4 GHz WPC54G ver. 3 Card and Ubuntu 11.04 32bit. Thank you again.
Mack
April 29, 2012 at 5:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am so-o-o-o tried of Windows and I cannot afford OS X. I have wanted a linux OS desktop config for a long time, and Ubuntu 11+ meets my needs perfectly. Wireless connectivity is critical for my business so Aagain, much thanks.