Johnny G Posted October 17, 2008 Share Posted October 17, 2008 i have a broadcom 4311, specifically a dell 1390, device id is 14e4:4311. i am using manual ip (static ip) settings, my network is superb under windoze (both wired and wireless, same computer and on other household computers) i am running 10.5.4, and other guides suggested i update to the newest airport software from apple before troubleshooting, but i feel that may be the very reason i am having problems. airport is configurable and running with my card, i can set the manual IP for my home network, i can connect to school's wifi using auto-dhcp, everything seems to work fine! am happy, except for 1 inconvenience; on my home network, unless i'm downloading something and constantly sending and recieving packets, my internet will cease to allow internet access after about 10 minutes of inactivity. i assume it is something to do with my kext, it fails to allow the wifi card to stay connected (btw, i use WPA security) clicking the airport icon to turn it off and turning it back on re-establishes my connection, as does using the 'diagnose' function under 'assist me' in airport. i can also de-and-reactivate my wifi and bluetooth using fn + F2 and i'll re-establish my connection again. all these methods do the same thing; disable and reanable my wifi card, which re-establishes the connection. this is extremely irritating, considering it worked flawlessly on other installs... i think the 10.5.4 update messed it up a bit, b4 that it worked, hence why i tried the apple airport update (didn't fix anything, and perhaps complicated the matter) also when booting in verbose mode, i can see that the device is initialized with the name of broadcom 4311, but later in the boot, 15 seconds or so, it says 43xx ethernet address followed by the device's mac address. it then says link up on en1, so all seems to be ok, but in previous installs it never said 43xx, always id'ed properly as 4311. i am at a loss for what to do next for fear of breaking my install yet again. as i post this, im sure i lost connection, forcing me to turn off and turn on my wifi card. it's driving me mad! what are the next steps to take? i ran the broadcom 43xx enabler script, i tried copying over my old appleairport kexts from my kalyway 10.5.1 install disc using pacifist, i tried everything i could. im almost ready to turn off static ip on my home network in favor of mac address filtering (but then i lose port forwarding which i need for remote requesting on XP with a family member in NC) AHHHH! any1 know what i can do from here? thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny G Posted October 18, 2008 Author Share Posted October 18, 2008 bump, and edit; i started over... and found something interesting. 10.5.4 doesn't break the wifi, nor does the apple update... 10.5.3 kalyway combo update did. at least i think so, anyways. just seems to not be function like the on the previous installs. or maybe i never noticed it b4, i don't know. to clear things up, my 4311 is minipci. tia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny G Posted October 18, 2008 Author Share Posted October 18, 2008 after trying many previous install package kexts from io80211family.kext (inside of which is the appleairportbroadcom4311.kext, which i have also replaced many times) the plugin kext from my install disc, previous update packages, etc... i just can't seem to get my card to work constantly. it always seems to lose signal. the worst part is it's so simple, i just turn off airport and turn it back on!! it's not a major problem that i need help with, just some strange configuration. WOAH, as a test, i ran a google ping in terminal. i never lost internet! after idle for an hour (no computer usage, only ping in the backround) i started up safari and all was well. it seems so that as long as i'm transmitting packets, os x keeps my wireless card initialized. does this suggest a power-down issue, where my wifi card shuts down and has to be reinitialized (via turning off and on the airport, or other tricks... see above)? totally at a loss for any solutions... please, some1, any1 suggest something!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cebiondark Posted October 18, 2008 Share Posted October 18, 2008 Hello Johnny, same problem as you, burn my head of! the last thing i tried was inverting the position of the antena cables in the wirless card! Buy the momento 15 minutes of not loosing connection! Lets keep in touch! cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cebiondark Posted October 19, 2008 Share Posted October 19, 2008 Flawless victory swapping the antena cables, working like a charm! chhers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny G Posted October 19, 2008 Author Share Posted October 19, 2008 inverting the antenna cables on the card?! wooooah, why have i not heard of or read of this b4? both of you did the same thing with sucessful results? i'm savvy enough to do it, but what is the purpose of the wire swap? is this problem antenna related, card related, is it due to something on the OS end? will this affect my connectivity for when i use XP (i have a dual boot)? i'd love a bit more info. both of you helped to raise my confidence in getting back up to 10.5.4! i need to be there because i want to run the SDK for iPhones to make apps (need 10.5.4) and sacrificing a solid wifi connection is not worth it. i hope you both read this post, or i will message. thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny G Posted November 4, 2008 Author Share Posted November 4, 2008 long overdue follow up: never tried, nor found any info on this wire swap idea... not doin it. got my wifi working well, but of course my perfect install went to hell with a hfs+ partition error of some sort... i tried to partition a drive in XP, IN Mac using parallels. oops. so far, no drops... P.S. I got my dell pci-e 1390, aka a broadcom 4311 (wifi) working perfectly with a simple replacement of 4 different 10.5.1 kalyway kexts. they are io80211family.kext ionetworkingfamily.kext iopccardfamily.kext and iopcifamily.kext i did this because i noticed the kalyway 10.5.3 update broke my wifi. i have since tried numerous kext swaps, custom kexts, original kexts, new with old with custom... enough reboots to drive me bonkers! but looks like everything works well now =P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ergosteur Posted December 13, 2008 Share Posted December 13, 2008 i've got the same issue with my Inspiron 640m and iDeneb 1.3 (10.5.5) Just swapped out the Intel 3945 (which by the way had amazing range and was really reliable in WinXP) for a Dell 1390 and having issues with the connection dropping, not getting an IP, etc. Do you remember exactly what you did/can you post your IO80211Family.kext? thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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