I don't think the thread needs to be closed. No matter how good your method is, most people are not going to install Linux (no matter how simple it is) just to run a firmware utility, even if it is the Holy Grail solution. Now if there was a native OSX utility to back up the old firmware, install the modded firmware, and with the ability to restore the firmware from the backup if needed, then I might agree.

I also see discussions elsewhere on the net where people report problems with the b43 firmware cutter utility. Apparently there are different versions floating around and they each depend on what hardware rev the card is at. More confusion. I just don't think it's appropriate to declare that all further discussion must revolve around your solution of choice.

Nevertheless, I've been looking for a miniPCI card that will work on XP, Linux and OSX and there aren't too many around. I will definitely try out your method just as soon as I can get my hands on a card with an appropriate chipset.

To rw3: You can't just type some lines into Terminal to do this. Try reading it again, although I must admit BuildSmart could do a much better job explaining it. He assumes the level of expertise around here in general is higher than it actually is.

I ported over the flashing software so yes a solution does exist natively in Mac OS X.

The software before porting does not support the newer 11n cards so anyone with these cards do not yet have a solution through linux but I was able to make the required changes in OS X and I am able to change these cards.

The reason is that the N-PHY has not yet been reverse engineered so the cards are not currently supported in linux without the use of ndiswrapper and this solution does not allow the card to be recognized by the native driver and this is why you can't modify them, the apple driver does support the N-PHY and is why I am able to process these types of cards.

The unfortunates of this is that the application is not publicly available however and in all probability never will be but, for a $7.95 fee, I'll mod your card for you, I can do PCI, PCIe and miniPCI, I do not have a PCIe to miniPCIe adapter so I wont be able to do these cards until I get one and the demand would have to justify the cost since the card required is almost $100.00 USD.

If you want a free solution then go the route of linux or write an OSX app to do it, if after writing it you want to make it open source then that decision is yours, if not no one can complain, you wrote it to solve your problem, what you do with it after that is entirely up to you.

I'll be using the Linux method FWIW I don't blame you for wanting to keep the source closed. I'm developing something now myself and I have no plans to make the source code available. I've spent too much time on it to just give it away. If I ever did write a utility to do what the Linux firmware cutter does for OSX I wouldn't make that an open source project, either. More power to you, I say.

For the longest time I pushed for open development of projects and this would have made a good example, unfortunately people dislike me cause of this.

Since no one wanted to work on anything under an open development platform I have gone off and done my own thing and resolved my own issues.

I've done things with others on this list and anything I've done I've openly shared with them as they have shared with me but nothing has been developed in an open environment and affects many who have an interest in the x86 project, nobody likes to re-invent the wheel (so to speak) so many things get left unfixed when people tend to develop for the hardware they do have and don't consider hardware that others might have.

My solution is far more involved, the fwcutter only makes the driver file for linux, that is it's only purpose, the ability to flash the sprom is a different app that is integrated into the b43 linux driver and there is not support for the 11n (N-PHY) cards.

My solution is now entirely OS X based, allows me to insert a card, (Atheros or Broadcom), modify the ID's in the sprom, update the firmware (if I have a better one for that chipset) and works with the 11n based cards where the linux method currently does not but you can use the 11n cards with the ndiswrapper in linux, just not make changes to the card.

Doing an installation is not required, I ran the entire process in my testing phase using a "Live CD" and didn't have any issues with the approach other than it being extremely time consuming to install the required software in the "Live CD" session.

How can I find my device ID?

You don't provide any details on your system or wifi so it's really hard to say what you should be looking for but if you have to ask how to find the device ID's then you shouldn't be looking as anything you'd want to do with it would be well beyond your capabilities.

Your card is not a Broadcom card if it reports RTL8185L, you have a newer version of the card and Belkin changed the chipset to Realtek so you have to use Realtek drivers, reports of working hardware are inconclusive because those who post the card details don't report enough information about the card.

The Belkin F5D7000 card with Broadcom chipset will work, the Belkin F5D7000 card with Realtek chipset will NOT work as an Apple wireless detected device.

You posted your ID's and your subsystem ID's.

Here's the decode:
PCI\VEN_1799&DEV_700F&SUBSYS_700F1799&REV_20 = ven 0x1799, dev 0x700F, subsys_dev 0x700F, subsys_ven 0x1799

VEN_106B = Apple
VEN_1799 = Realtek
VEN_14E4 = Broadcom
VEN_168C = Atheros

Also, having the correct product and vendor ID's don't always make a card work, specifically in the case of wifi, for example, those with BCM94321/BCM94322 based cards may not achieve full functionality and connection speed in OS X because the driver is selected based on the subsystem ID's so having the correct subsystem ID's is also important if you want a connection speed greater than 130mbp.

Does your re-branding steps/solution mentioned at http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=109613 works with compaq c500?

I have no clue cause I don't own one of every laptop out there, what is the wireless card in the c500 (card details)?

Ive got just this question that.. If i get a BCM 4306 replace my current 2100 card. Will the secured networks work or will it not let me access them? after ofcourse trying to install all the drivers for the 4306. I know it is going to be tough.

Thanks.

not working on my Dell D600. I have some Broadcom. Don't know exaclty which model.

Have the card rebranded and use the apple drivers then everything works.

I had no issues with WPA/WPA2 and a gigabit Airport base so I see no reason why you would.

Under WEP I had to have the router set up with the #1 key as default, making it any other didn't seem to work with any cards (not even real apple laptops).

thnx a lot..i'll surely try it out
thnx again

I have a problem with a PCMCIA card...
it is not recognized asairport after a resume from sleep...
it is not a problem of PCMCIA because it is recognized as PCMCIA exactly the same... but it says "no airport is installed"
any ideas? is there some kext that I can try to unload and reload?

thanks in advance

Para os brasileiros!!!!

Broadcom BCM4318
Acer aspire 3623 NWXMI

FUNCIONOU PERFEITAMENTE!

Added 4325 and it worked great!

Thanks again!!!

4315, Broadcom BCM4315 802.11 h+d , hardware ID : PCI\VEN_14E4&4315&SUBSYS_000B1028&REV_01

4311, not tested yet. will this work with leopard?

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 Running Kalyway 10.5.2 with a Broadcom Dev ID 4315 that I cannot get to work. I have tried running the Broadcom enabler script, I have tried Editing the NetworkInterfaces.Plist. I have tried The Cardbus/PCMCIA Card kexts located here http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...c=81036&hl=

No matter what I do I get nothing at all with this network card. No errors, OSX does not detect it at all. What am I doing wrong?

Apple does not have a driver for the bcm4315, the Cardbus / PCMCIA drivers are for just that, Cardbus and PCMCIA cards but even these devices need to have the correct ID's to work properly in OS X.

Does your Dell use miniPCI or miniPCIe cards???

Does your Dell white-list the wireless adapters like some of the HP's and IBM's??

If not you can pick up a bcm4306. bcm4309, bcm4318 or bcm4321 card, rebrand the card with apple ID's and you should be golden.

Myself in miniPCI I favor the Dell DW1450 and DW1470 cards because they support 802.11a/b/g and are more like the real apple cards.

bcm4301, bcm4311 and bcm4315 adapters require very unique drivers and these cards are OEM only adapters and are not likely to get any kind of stability or reliability in OS X even if you managed to get it working.

I found out it is a PCIe card How do I know this though?



And how do you


The card shows up in vista as Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card

Hello, i have searched forums for 4 days and i still cannot get my 4311 broadcom card on my Hp Dv5000 to work, the computer recognizes it under locations in system profiler. But the airport icon says "No Airport card installed". I ran the enabler script and tried to find my wireless card in my laptop but it is not visible through the ram slot and i cannot open the case to get to it, therefore i cannot use the 20th pin method (I have a button on the front of my case to enable/disable wirless). I am running out of ideas and have resorted to asking you guys for assistance. What do you suggest?

BCM4311 should work well. In your case I could think of a crappy software switch. Check the following things:

• Is your card enabled in BIOS? Sometimes you have a choice between WLAN disabled/automatic/enabled. In this case, set it to enabled.
• Boot Linux or Windoze on that machine and enable your card. Now REBOOT into OSX and check if it is working.
• If that did not help, shutdown the laptop. Disconnect the power cord and remove the battery for a while (~5 minutes). Put the battery back in, plug in the power supply and try to boot into OSX.

If all of these things did not help: get a USB WLAN adaptor


- mcsmart

Well im using a Dell 1525 and i beleve we have the same wireless card. i just ran the script and it works fine now. make sure that leapord actually sees an airport before u run it. and also make sure it is turned on.

Well I have a HP dv5000 laptop and i know where to find the driver for the button to enable and disable my card but its a windows driver is there a way to alter this driver and make it work for OSX

Cheers mcsmart, Wi Fi working at last.

My PCI card is BCM4306 (0x14E4,0x120F) recognized as an AirPort Extreme.

After installing your fix I ran Airport update & found the card was no longer recognised but I ran your fix again & now its working spot on on. Thanks again. OrbecB - Oh & its Uphuck 10.4.9

my card works natively but installed this to test and works fine.
Jul 18 21:00:06 localhost kernel[0]: wl0: Broadcom BCM4312 802.11 Wireless Controller

MCSMART,

I updated my Kalyway 10.5.2 system with the Time Machine and Airport update like you said before installing the Broadcom 43xx package and it bricked my system. It just keep rebooting. How can I restore the kernel from the oringinal Kalyway 10.5.2 DVD rather than doing a clean install? Thanks

DAVIM

It's not bricked. It's only "bricked" if it takes some sort of hardware intervention to fix it. A brick is a useless hunk of rock. As long as you can still re-install or recover your OS then it's definitely not bricked.

I updated my Kalyway 10.5.2 system up to 10.5.3 with Mysticus C's updater and then used Apple's 10.5.4 updater. Unfortunately, my Broadcom 4329 wireless (Linksys WMP300N PCI board) no longer works. I have tried everything in this thread to get it alive and kicking again, but no dice. The wireless does not show up in the NetworkInterfaces.plist file. It certainly appears I have the AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext setup properly (and in the right location) but at this point I've hit a brick wall as to how to proceed. I posted more information here:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=116920

I can provide additional information as needed and I appreciate any help and/or insight.

Thanks!

..Al

I have also a Dell 1525. Unfortunately I'm not able to get my wireless card working. How did you manage to get it working? How have you installed OSX, which version. I've installed with Kalyway 10.5.2.. My system doesn't see any airport interface, not even after the bcm -enabler. How did you edit the enabler exactly? Thank for any suggestions! In the HCL 10.5.2 there are two posts of success with the dell wireless 1395.

Update: Success!! The 1395 in my Dell 1525 is now recognized as Airport! You have to edit the script for the 1395:

for the chipset add:

echo "- Broadcom BCM4310 802.11 a/g Wireless LAN"

for the device id add:

<string>pci14e4,4315</string>

After applying the edited script and restarting the dell 1395 showed up as airport.

Many thanks to mcsmart for the script!!

I understand these drivers were built by Apple for Leopard and therefore they shouldn't have connection drops.. but has anyone experienced them as well as me?

Cool, but what do you mean by 1395? And the device id you posted is already in the script.

I've just added some more device ids (also the 4310).

- mcsmart

I have the Dell Truemobile 1370 (BCM 4318) which I just received because I replaced my intel pro 2200bg card. I tried all your files, but I still dont see any airport cards in my system. Any help?

Broadcom 4318 question

Does this driver make the light on the WLAN actually stay solid during data transfer? The one I have now (which worked perfectly right after install with iATKOS 10.5.4 DVD) has a blinking light during data transfer. The latest windows drivers keep it solid. Maybe there is an option for this?

does anyone know how to get broadcom 4311 to be recognized as an real airport not as third party airport? Thank you!

I have a confirmed working adapter using this modified Broadcom driver. I have a G5 running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and I went to Best Buy to purchase a Dynex Wireless PCI Adapter DX-BGDTC for 29.99. After I ran a sudo install in Terminal and installed the hardware the OS recognized the card just as if it were an airport card. The problem I has having was the card was erratic and hopped from "Connection Timeout" to "No Connection" to "Connection". Even when I tried to surf during the Green "Connection" in the Network Panel The connection was really REALLY SLOW!. I did just about everything I could do to make sure the card would work with my G5 and I was getting nowhere. I figured maybe I could tweak my Linksys WRT54G wireless router because I figured the card and the router were'nt connecting correctly. I dialed up my router's IP and made changes to my avanced wireless settings like moving my transfer rate to lower numbers and turning on frame burst ect....long story short I went a whole day tinkering with the card and the router and I was getting nowhere. I figured as a last step I would read the manual to the card to see if theres anything I was missing. Everything looked standard except one part of the manual that dawned on me. The manual clearly stated that Dynex wireless adapters are made to work in sync with Dynex wireless routers. The defaulted channel on their routers is channel 11. The defaulted channel on my Linsys wireless router is channel 6. I made the necessary changes according to Dynex specs and changed the channel of the router to 11. When I went to go surfing the adapter worked flawlessly without a hitch. As a general lesson I urgently ask ppl that you PLEASE READ YOUR ADAPTER'S MANUAL. If you are having connection issues more than likely your manual can point you in the right direction. If you want to get the same setup I had you can go to best buy and purchase a Dynex DX-BGDTCfor 29.99. My chipset was Broadcom and the model was BCM4318. Change the router to channel 11 (Dynex Specs) and you'll be surfing in no time!

I run the script, but unfortunately, it didn't work.
My wireless is Broadcom Bcm 4310.
Nothing came up as an airport, the patch was done correctly though.
Thank you mcsmart for your effort and your patience.


I run the script, but unfortunately, it didn't work.
My wireless is Broadcom Bcm 4310.
Nothing came up as an airport, the patch was done correctly though.
Thank you mcsmart for your effort and your patience.

You could ask Apple if they'll support your WLAN LED
But seriously, you should be happy if your wireless LAN is working in the first place, since many users cannot get it to work. Don't bother about stupid toys like LEDs - the core stuff is important.
If you want better hardware support: use Linux or Win***s.

- mcsmart

Getting hung up on whether the LED works or not is a waste of time and energy in my opinion, this is why there is the airport icon in the task bar, it acts as the LED and places it in a place that is far easier to observe than looking at the back of the computer to see if you have a connection.

Baring this, there are several issues that prevent a wireless adapter from functioning properly or being recognized.

One is the PCI classification, if it's 0200 then the airport software wont be able to properly manage the card, the other is the Product and Vendor ID's are always a problem because this is how a card is recognized by the apple driver.

Because you have a bcm4318 from one OEM manufacturer, it may use a different classification and ID's in another OEM manufacturers card but the cards are identical right down to the markings on the PCB.

If you locate and install the PCITools found in XLabs you can isolate the exact ID's of the installed card by issuing "lspci -nnv" and it will also provide you with the all ID's including the subsystem ID's.

Information of importance:

This can be translated to: (see Proposed Method for better solution)


Very few Broadcom cards are recognized as real apple AirPort Extreme cards just by adding the ID to the Info.plist, actually I haven't come across one yet that does yet people make this claim and I have tested the cards they claim to be using and they have not reported as such.

If you have access to a ubuntu installation you can rebrand the b/g and a/b/g cards provided you know what to change them too and they work flawlessly after that.

I have done this with Dynex, D-Link, HP, NetGear and LinkSYS cards with good success.

For 11a/b/g laptop miniPCI cards (not miniPCIe) I exclusively use the Dell DW1470 (BCM4309KFB) and rebrand accordingly (less than $20.00 on fleabay), once rebranded you no longer have to edit any files, the card works flawlessly and is supported natively.

You can even purchase a PCI to miniPCI adapter and use the card in a desktop computer that has an empty PCI slot and enjoy the benefit of supported wireless.

For 11a/b/g laptop miniPCIe cards (not miniPCI)you can use the Dell DW1490.



What I don't understand is why you have to add a million ID's to get them working?

I would have thought that the people thinking of these modifications and patches would know how to match the device based on it's classification and would remove the need to patch for each and every card out there.

I would think that the following "Proposed Method" substitution is a far better and more intelligent solution.

Current Method:

Proposed Method:


Explanation:

• examine all cards that are assigned 0280 which are alternate network controllers (not ethernet).
• match all Broadcom ID's of these alternate network cards.

This would make all Broadcom wireless cards be recognized out of the box and wouldn't interfere with Broadcom Ethernet adapters reducing the amount of work required by the end user to get the card recognized.

Now, there is the odd OEM that has classified their cards as 0200, this should be changed to 0280, it will not affect the performance or use of the card, it will allow it to be properly recognized and allow it to be managed by the airport software which is another issue preventing some people from using their cards.

I'm curious about this as well. I just tried this script with a Linksys WMP54GS PCI card. Everything works fine with great speed for awhile, but large downloads seem to kill the connection. For instance, downloading Xcode always kills the wireless connection after a few hundred megabytes. The connection is dropped, and the wireless card stops working. I cannot reconnect to any access points until I restart the computer.

Any ideas?

This is with a fresh install of Kalyway 10.5.2, by the way.

bcm4310, 14e4, 4315 works well with your great help. Thanks a lot

but is there any news for bcm5906M? i can't go wireless all the time.....

It appears that everyone doesn't understand that the quick fix of adding the ID's of the wireless adapter to the driver while it does make the card work, it does not enable features and functionalities only available to devices bearing the Apple subsystem ID's because it uses the generic portions of the drivers.

A basic example of this is the LED, using the generic portion of the driver supplied in the apple driver allows the card to manage the LED by it's default assigned behavior, this could be always on, on when connected, on during reception, on during transmission, on during reception and transmission or off and in most cases it's off.

An Apple ID'd device will have the LED on and will flash during transmission/reception of data or on during a connection and these are the way in which apple has programmed the LED behavior.

If your device doesn't contain the Apple ID's you wont get support for TC and your support of TM over wireless will be limited.

If you don't have any intensions of streaming audio of video usage or you don't plan on using a TC or advance features of TM then using the generic driver is acceptable and the System Profiler report of a "Third Party Wireless" has little meaning other than letting you know it's not a fully supported device.

If you know the card you have uses the same chipset as the apple card it would make sense to take the time to rebrand the card and have it work properly, if the chipset is close it may still work but the LED may not work properly and that is OK, it's only an idiot light.

If you want to use an A/B/G card I recommend the Dell DW1470 for miniPCI cards as these cards use the exact same chipset as the apple cards.

Myself I go the extra mile when rebranding and replace vendor labels with custom labels identifying the device as an 100% Apple Airport Extreme compatible device, provide windows drivers on real printed on CD's (not CD-R's) and as of last week new packaging reflecting the device enclosed.

Rebranding the card does have some drawbacks, if you continue to use the card with windows you must obtain a driver that the rebranded card can use, I was fortunate in this area as I obtained WHQL drivers from Broadcom as an OEM product vendor so the nice fancy printed on CD's my customers get looks more attractive than buying something else from someone else who sends a driver on a CD-R or provides a link for a driver that might be compatible but is only available in 32-bit or doesn't support your particular version of Windows.

Also one more thing to note, not all cards seem to support the QOS protocol and some do not support WPA2 but a router assigned a WPA2 key will allow a connection of WEP-AES for backward compatibility.

Now, you may find a wireless card that works as a third part but doesn't work after rebranding and this is usually the firmware in the card, an example of this is the Dynex PCI wireless adapter part number DX-WGPDTC, some work after rebranding while others don't, the ones that don't the fix is to upload the latest firmware to the PCI card and then rebrand the card and then it works as expected.

There shouldn't be any reason why you need to change the vendor or product ID of a Broadcom based card but you may have to change the pci device class since some are programmed as 0200 which is an ethernet adapter and all apple wireless network devices are programmed as 0280.

In other threads I have explained the process of rebranding and this is now fairly simple in OS's like Ubuntu 8.04 for the B/G and A/B/G cards, they did have a tentative release to support the N cards but they ran into issues and release has been delayed but the software is still being worked on.

People asked me to help make an OSX application solution and while I agreed to help, no one interested in the solution was interested on working on the project, they just wanted an OSX solution so the project never made it off the ground.

Simply put, if anyone has the time to write a terminal application that will read and display the device configuration/information I will donate the write routines and provide the code to support the 11N based cards which would make life much easier on everyone who wants to obtain a properly supported native wireless adapter, this can be done in so many safe ways such as reading a plist file to obtain ID's of devices for each type and auto rebrand it so you can't program the wrong information into it cause too many noobs would brick their cards if some kind of protection isn't provided.

You are welcome to contact me for assistance on writing the application but don't contact me asking me how to perform the task in OSX if an application is not publicly available for OSX, I really don't have the patience (or interest) to teach anyone what they need to know to achieve the goal.

Soo...basically if I have OSX and a dell truemobile which is a bcm 4318 card, and isn't being recognized by the drivers provided already...i'm SOL?

No, your not SOL, I'd wonder why it's not being recognized since the basic card ID's are correct.

You've probably mucked with the Extensions so much that it may never work, it's hard to say cause I have no clue what you've already done at this point.

If you have the DW1470 is should be recognized as an AirPort (third part) OOB.

Rebranding is the only solution to the true AirPort dilemma because the DW1470 is the exact same chipset used in the apple card (I've rebranded many of these).

Ok, i have HP dv2220us w/ BCM 4321, tried this patch, but still is being recognized as 3rd party airport card.

Anyone know how to fix this? I cannot get the wired LAN to work either. Please someone be kind and help me get either the wired LAN to work, or the WLAN, both would be great. Thanks in advance.

using 10.5.2 Leo4all V3 w/ nForce driver and broadcom driver from install. I'm willing to re-install if i was supposed to select something else. Please help

I've checked the WLAN with lspci in my machine, HP Presario C300.
The result is

I've applied your proposing method and it didn't work for me.
Do you have any more suggestions?

Hmm..thanks. I'm considering wiping the hd and restarting from scratch..

Hi,
my Dell Truemobile 1490 is partially working on 10.5.4

I can connect to unsecured networks, but whenever I try WEP secured ones I get an error message and I can't connect.

Anyone has this problem too?

Please, any help would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance.