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

I've got this chip on my laptop too. I thing it should work substituting the dev id and the ven id with the ones in the info.plist file .
There is an explanation on how to do this in this forum, but i haven't tried yet. Let us know, good luck.

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.

brother,can you make BCM 5787m(14E4 1693 ) work?,could you help me ?thx

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.

Hi!

Same problem.... (Lenovo 3000 N200)
Can everybody upload a for 14e4:1713 a kext (10.5.1 Leopard - iATKOS).....

Thanks for all help.....

Any update on this? I have the same chip on my lenovo n200 0769AVU. I would be glad to test a driver.

THX

BUMP... Anyone?

Would really like this to work, any news Azurael?

Bump...

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).

Thanks for the great info MacGirl, but it would be great if someone could get this working, the only thing that is major that is not working for me.

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.

Should I make a request for X-Labs?

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.

Worked in linux. But how in OSX? At least this means were closer.

FreeBSD has the tg3 driver too, so maybe someone could test it out?

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

Ugh, this is the only thing holding me back from using Leopard V_V.

use a usb to ehernet adpapter, even the apple one is cheap.

^^
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.

we can make a donation pot for who came with a good driver.

I am not against this suggestion but who would write the drivers and how many $$ do they need to write? I have a BCM5752.

Who write a BCM5906 driver is a good man!!!!

I just do not understand why we can't port FreeBSD drivers, but then again I am a noob. I think part of the reason there is no driver yet is because there is not enough demand.

Of course you can port it!!! But remember one thing before you start, you are not running FreeBSD. (a.k.a. you need to learn about IOKit)

@Superhai


Still, a BSD driver is much closer to osx than a linux driver. IOKit networking is just wrappers around the network stacks. Ever look at a Linux ethernet driver? All kinds of things that don't translate at all into the BSD universe.

Yeah. Actually making a network driver for OSX is not very hard (but you someone have to do it). I have an old tutorial from the web if somoone really want to put their mind together and start.

Click to view attachment

It is a base and before intel, but it is the same IOKit. So if you can read the BSD source and this and know programming you might get some results. I would start on this if just had the time...

It is the Broadcom Tigon tg3 that is used both in FreeBSD and Linux. If you could port this, you would be my god. Vostro 1500/1700 users have been getting all the love V_V.

I found that devs have porting Linux drivers more easier than BSD ones.

I only suggested FreeBSD because I know OS X has BSD roots.

Tigon III is a whole family of Broadcom chips. There are at least 6 different chips. It's no surprise, really, that a hacked-up driver for the 5701 doesn't work on the 5750 chips. One bit flag out of place could attempt to turn on a feature that just doesn't exist and any code in the driver that depends on that flag is going to fail. Some have DMA bugs, others don't. Some have timing bugs, some don't. Some will do checksums in hardware, others won't. It's one family but all the chips in the tg3 line might as well be from different planets.

Well, I can imagine porting from linux has advantages of much larger user base, better debugged driver and probably better documentation.

Are there any changes until now?
I got a Lenovo 3000 N200 - and I have no network connections ( darn modern notebooks LOL ).

I could really need a driver!

I have downloaded opensource drivers from the apple.com but when i tried to compile the driver in xcode it gave some error. I have the linux source of BCM5906 and tried to read it but no use.for 10.5.2 the driver source code and network programming guide (pdf) is attached with the post

Well at least there is some work being done. Good job guys.

The BCM5906M is different from others:


BCM5901 = "Broadcom NetXtreme Fast Ethernet"
BCM5906 = "Broadcom NetLink ™ Fast Ethernet"
BCM5782 = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet"
BCM5788 = "Broadcom NetLink ™ Gigabit Ethernet"
BCM5789 = "Broadcom NetLink ™ Gigabit Ethernet"
BCM5700FB = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Fiber"
BCM5700FA = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Fiber"
BCM5701FA = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Fiber"
BCM5703S = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Fiber"
BCM5703SW = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet"
BCM5704S = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Fiber"
BCM5704SW = "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet"

and



This release of software supports:
- BCM5751M NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5705 NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5702 NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5752M NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5753M NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5755M NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5781 NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5787M NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5788 NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5789 NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5906M NetLink Ethernet Adapter
- BCM5787M NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Adapter


We can know that the bcm5906m is netlink but not netXtreme!!!!

Yeah of course it is. It is 100Mbit and not Gigabit.

The installer on Windows uses all the settings of the 5788M BTW.

I have installed FreeBSD7.0 today, and I found that not only the network-card cannot be recognized, but also the audio-card, bad luck!!!

That is wierd, I have Ubuntu installed and it works fine.

It's not weird at all. FreeBSD is not Linux. They are 2 completely different animals. The only thing they share is a common Unix heritage. The development paths of each over the last 15 years are very different.

But why the driver can work on ubuntu ,but not leopard???

Under FreeBSD, I found a "ndisgen" , it can translate the drivers of windows to FreeBSD, and now I have both sound and networking driver under FreeBSD

Can we also write a "ndisgen" under Mac OS X?

Linux is not Leopard. What part of that don't you understand?

There are a lot of diferent UNIXes: Unix History

Is like you want to make a driver from Win98 working on WinXP, even some XP drivers don't work on Vista, the same apply to UNIXes,

BSD drivers don't work on Linux or Solaris, Linux drivers don't work on AIX, HPUX or SCO UNIX, and so, and so.

Maybe you are right!

So let's talk about how to solve the problem (BCM5906M driver for leopard)?

Who can upload this problem to XLabs?

http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/free...rg/8716454.html

Broadcom 5906 in FreeBSD ， can you transplantation it?

This has no need to be on x-labs before someone starts programming this. And, no need to look for linux or bsd unless you want to program it, it is the IOKit part that is missing and what should be programmed. That means the physical part of the network stack.