Last week I ordered a Dell 1390 wifi card for the netbook so I could have wireless connectivity in all 3 OSes (WinXP, Mac OS X and Linux). I thought I'd mention what I did to get it working in the various systems.
MAC OS X:
This was easy. I simply booted into the OS and it told me I had a new network device. I followed the prompts, selected my access point and I was on the internet. Woopie!!!
Windows XP:
I refered back to a post about my HP dv2810 install from last summer and got the driver software from Dell. The link to the driver is here. I saved it to my SD card as I'd need it for the Linux installation as well. Next I went to the Hardware Device Manager and installed the driver for the unidentified new hardware. I told Windows I'd specify the location of the files and before I knew it I had it working in Windows. Pretty easy so far.
Fedora 10:
My first attempt, following the same instructions as the dv2810 didn't work so well. Here's what I tried:
But this is where it broke. I got a "No such device" error message instead of it showing me the wifi card as it did on the HP laptop.
Back to the linuxwireless.org site. I noticed that it shows the bcm4311 rev 1 as being supported, since it was I thought there had to be a better way than the ndiswrapper solution. It turns out there is. I have the rpmfusion repos installed so I was able to simply install the driver.
After a reboot I was good to go.
I noticed the signal strength on the Dell card is quite a lot more than the original atheros card. Not a bad upgrade for $15 including shipping. Checking the power consumption with powertop seems to indicate a slightly lower power draw with the card as well. I'll just have to see how the battery does I guess. Without firing up the soldering iron, I think I've done all the hardware hacking I plan to do to this little netbook.
MAC OS X:
This was easy. I simply booted into the OS and it told me I had a new network device. I followed the prompts, selected my access point and I was on the internet. Woopie!!!
Windows XP:
I refered back to a post about my HP dv2810 install from last summer and got the driver software from Dell. The link to the driver is here. I saved it to my SD card as I'd need it for the Linux installation as well. Next I went to the Hardware Device Manager and installed the driver for the unidentified new hardware. I told Windows I'd specify the location of the files and before I knew it I had it working in Windows. Pretty easy so far.
Fedora 10:
My first attempt, following the same instructions as the dv2810 didn't work so well. Here's what I tried:
# wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R174291.exe
# unzip R174291.exe
# cd DRIVER_US/bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: ssb)
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# iwconfig wlan0
But this is where it broke. I got a "No such device" error message instead of it showing me the wifi card as it did on the HP laptop.
Back to the linuxwireless.org site. I noticed that it shows the bcm4311 rev 1 as being supported, since it was I thought there had to be a better way than the ndiswrapper solution. It turns out there is. I have the rpmfusion repos installed so I was able to simply install the driver.
# yum install broadcom-wl
After a reboot I was good to go.
I noticed the signal strength on the Dell card is quite a lot more than the original atheros card. Not a bad upgrade for $15 including shipping. Checking the power consumption with powertop seems to indicate a slightly lower power draw with the card as well. I'll just have to see how the battery does I guess. Without firing up the soldering iron, I think I've done all the hardware hacking I plan to do to this little netbook.
