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BCM5906


Azurael
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14e4:1713 - anybody got one of these working in OS X? Seems to be a fairly uncommon Broadcom chip used for 100mbit PCIe implementations in a couple of notebooks, including my Lenovo N200. It appears to be based on the single-chip BCM57xx series chips, but with a 100mbit PHY rather than a gigbit one built in. It doesn't work with OS X's AppleBCM5701Ethernet.kext, so I might be that I'm SOL, but all those devices use the Broadcom Tigon3 kernel module in Linux, so it makes me wonder if recompiling the driver with some tweaks my coax it into working. I haven't tried AppleBCM5751.kext yet... Off to do that now :)

 

 

Solution is here: New driver thread

Edited by Hagar
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Well, like I said in my original post, I did try AppleBCM5701Ethernet.kext with the device ID and I get 'getAdapterInfo - Device is unknown' during boot. I haven't tried AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext yet, but I have got hold of a copy now, so I'll try that.

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  • 2 weeks later...
14e4:1713 - anybody got one of these working in OS X? Seems to be a fairly uncommon Broadcom chip used for 100mbit PCIe implementations in a couple of notebooks, including my Lenovo N200. It appears to be based on the single-chip BCM57xx series chips, but with a 100mbit PHY rather than a gigbit one built in. It doesn't work with OS X's AppleBCM5701Ethernet.kext, so I might be that I'm SOL, but all those devices use the Broadcom Tigon3 kernel module in Linux, so it makes me wonder if recompiling the driver with some tweaks my coax it into working. I haven't tried AppleBCM5751.kext yet... Off to do that now :thumbsup_anim:

 

Hi! Have you any success? A also have Lenovo 3000 N200. After fixing DEVID in AppleBCM5751.kext i can see Ethernet in SysPrefs with 00:00:00:00:00:00 MAC-address. Fixing MAC manually also like setting IP manually doesn't work.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I modified the kext for 5751 several times without success, I even can make the kext activate the card, and put his MAC address but no connection at all.

 

This card is very similar to the 5788, I know this because I analized the windows installer (.inf), it applies most of the things that the 5788 uses and add some more settings (mobile btw).

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Yeah it is the only the only thing not working for me also. I would really like to see a kext even one thats close to working so I could tinker with it some.

 

Its so strange being so close to the BCM57XX series that this somehow cant be made to work. That is Bizarre.

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I asked google,and I got the follow message.Does it help us?

they discussed BCM5906 on dell's Ubuntu.Maybe anybody would try it on leopard?

 

I have gotten my ethernet connection to work after compiling the latest tg3 driver. I found out I needed to do this after scanning the Dell-linux forum which mentioned the ethernet problem could be fixed by re-compiling the kernel module using dkms. I could not find any Mandriva dkms package for tg3, but eventually I found an rpm (tg3-3.77e-1.src.rpm) of the tg3 source code on an HP website: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/support/files/se...load/27404.html Strangely, the Broadcom website does not seem to mention the BCM5906 ethernet card, or offer new versions of the tg3 driver.

 

To compile it I installed the kernal source and the tg3 source code which gets installed in /usr/src/rpm/SOURCES/ with the rpm spec file in /usr/src/rpm/SPECS/tg3.spec. I followed this sequence

 

cd /usr/src/rpm

rpmbuild -bb SPECS/tg3.spec

 

 

This created /usr/src/rpm/RPMS/i586/tg3-3.77e-1.i586.rpm which contains the driver tg3.ko.

 

I installed this rpm which puts the driver in /lib/modules/2.6.17-14mdv/kernel/drivers/net. I noticed that all the other drivers in that directory were gzip'ed, i.e had ".gz" file names, so I gziped the tg3.ko driver also. Also, there had been an old tg3 driver there which I over-wrote.

 

I rebooted and then ethernet worked.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oddly enough with a EFI install I get my ethernet to show up in networking and it looks like it will work. However when I actually try to use it no luck.

 

Azurael are you going to return to this topic.. I would love to test a driver for this chip.

 

Thanks

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  • 2 weeks later...

^^

this is not the most optimal thing to do. I would like not to have other external devices for my computer.

I know that mine is working and the BCM5906 is the last thing I'm missing. So I hope that anyone can make a driver for this one too.

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^^

this is not the most optimal thing to do. I would like not to have other external devices for my computer.

I know that mine is working and the BCM5906 is the last thing I'm missing. So I hope that anyone can make a driver for this one too.

 

I'm with you XoDeus.. I have this chip to. Works in Linux, works in windows. If we can just bridge the gap and get it working in OSX.. THAT WOULD BE SWEET.

 

I'll be glad to test a driver for this one and I'm sure others would to.

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