Rebrand Your WMP300N to work in b/g/n

[WhiteMonster]

I found this post from august... took me forever to find this information which is why i'm creating a new post.... Credits go out to Buildsmart for discovering this and chrand for posting this....

 

This is only for the Broadcom 4329 Chipset.. this is used in the WMP300N Rev.1 Card... if you bought it in the U.S. it's probably Rev.1.

 

Below is a copy of chrand's post:

 

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Let me start out by thanking BuildSmart. Without his patience and direction I would not have been able to get this to work.

 

Basically I purchased the Linksys WMP300N wireless card with the hopes that it would work seamlessly in OSX. After fiddling with it for a while I was able to get it to work, but not at N speeds. I started doing some research and found that it would not work because its vendor and product IDs were not on Apple's whitelist. One way to get it to work is to change the card's IDs so that is on the whitelist.

 

Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee that this process will work, and if something goes wrong, you can very well brick your wireless card. I am writing this from memory, so there may be an error or two, and there is probably a quicker/shorter way to accomplish this. Please post what worked/didn't work for you and I'll try to update this post.

 

Note: This procedure requires that the machine you are using have a working Internet connection to download some of the bits. This means you need to have another _functioning_ network card in the machine you are using besides the WMP300N.

 

Procedure:

1) Install Ubuntu - I used Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron but it wouldn't recognize the WMP300N. I may have been able to just upgrade the kernel, but I updated the whole distribution to 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Alpha 3. You can probably just do a clean install of 8.10 Alpha 3 or later: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing

 

2) Install prerequisites - In a terminal window execute the following commands (you can skip remark likes which start with #):

# Install packages that are required

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install build-essential

sudo apt-get install curl

sudo apt-get install git-core

 

# Install b43 driver and firmware

# The next command will ask if you'd like to fetch and extract firmware - say YES

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

sudo modprobe b43

 

# Get, compile, and install the latest ssb-sprom tool

git clone http://git.bu3sch.de/git/b43-tools.git

cd b43-tools/ssb_sprom

make

sudo cp ssb-sprom /usr/sbin/

sudo chmod 755 /usr/sbin/ssb-sprom

sudo chown root:root /usr/sbin/ssb-sprom

 

3) Update the sprom - Open up a terminal window and execute the following commands (you can skip remark likes which start with #):

# Set an environment variable for your sprom

SSB_SPROM=$(find /sys/devices -name ssb_sprom)

 

# Check the value of the variable

# If this returns more than 1 instance of "/sys/..." then

# refer to http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#relatedtools

# for additional steps. Otherwise you can can continue with this process

echo $SSB_SPROM

 

# Get a copy of your sprom into your home directory to work with

cd ~

sudo cat $SSB_SPROM > ssb_sprom_copy

 

# Examine the contents of the sprom. Note that some of this information is incorrect,

# but the vendor and product ID are what we care about, and they are correct

ssb-sprom -i ssb_sprom_copy -P

 

# The next command will update the vendor and product IDs and create a new sprom file

ssb-sprom -i ssb_sprom_copy --subv 0x106b --subp 0x0087 -o new_ssb_sprom_copy

 

# Examine the contents of the new sprom file. Verify the vendor and product IDs.

# I have attached a copy of my sprom below as an example

ssb-sprom -i new_ssb_sprom_copy -P

 

# Ensure that this variable still has the path to your sprom

echo $SSB_SPROM

 

# write the new sprom to your card

sudo cp new_ssb_sprom_copy $SSB_SPROM

 

4) [Optional] Update the Broadcom kext info.plist - Depending on the method you used to install OSX, your machine may not recognize the card. This is because the PCI Product ID (14e4,4329) may not be in the list of IDs configured to use the Broadcom driver. There are various methods for modifying this file. One method is outlined in this post. The line you add should look like the one below. I have attached a copy of my info.plist as an example.

<string>pci14e4,4329</string>

 

References:

Original post on modifying sprom: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mp;#entry776755

Linux Wireless b43 homepage: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

bcm43xx Development mailing list archives: http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev

One method of updating info.plist: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=23684

[JaE-V]

Procedure:

1) Install Ubuntu

 

I'll pass

[WhiteMonster]

I'll pass

 

you can use a separate computer or just get an old IDE/Sata drive and install ubuntu on it... as of now... it's the only way of getting the wireless N part working on the WMP300N rev.1.