[mdlug] WiFi -Woes(?) or Broadcom is 'the' lame

[Robert Adkins]

	So, I finally decided to fix my issue of basically ignoring the WiFi
adapter in my old Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop. It has a "Dell Truemobile 1300"
wifi adapter which is using a Broadcom chipset.

	I went to the NDISwrapper site, read through the wiki a bit and
found an excellent listing of what cards/drivers are supposed to work.
(Which also included links to those drivers.)

	The removal of the non-working opensource bcm4xx driver and
installation of the ndiswrapper with Windows driver went smoothly. I fired
up kwifi and voila! I was able to show a signal, scan and see my WPA
configured wifi router and... Nothin..

	I entered my passkey as the kwifi did correctly identify the
necessary configuration. Unfortunately, that didn't work. The wpa_supplicant
fired up, still nothing worked.

	As a test, I temporarily set the wifi router into an open, no
authentication needed setup and I was able to connect without any problem.

	Right now, I am assuming that there is some issue with the Windows
driver that isn't allowing the wpa_supplicant to properly do its job. It may
also be that the wifi router (Linksys WRT54G) is setup in a way that the
driver I am using just can't grok and thus needs to be configured using a
different WPA setup.

	Anyone in a similar situation and have a few pointers?

	Really, I have no problem with plugging the laptop into the wall
jacks at home. As it stands, I should be able to connect fine to the free
wifi setups at coffee shops and other locations. I would really enjoy being
able to use my wifi anywhere in the house.

	Thanks for any assistance,	
	
	Rob