errandwolfe Posted July 26, 2007 Share Posted July 26, 2007 There is a large number of people out there that have laptops with a built-in Broadcom 4311 wifi card. Seeing as how the 4311 is basically identical to an Airport card, we all had great hope this card would work...it does not. Out of the gate, we all thought our problem had to do with power not being delivered to the card since these have a software based radio switch. We have since been able to verify that the switch is not having any impact on our problem. By taping over pin 20 on the card you disable the switch and the card remains in an always on state. We have verified this in Windows and Linux. Our best guess right now is that possibly our mini PCI Express slots are not being recognized properly by OS X. On that note, I have two questions. 1.) Is there any way to verify whether our PCI Express slot is functional or not? 2.) How can we add support for the slot if in fact it is not working? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 1, 2007 Author Share Posted August 1, 2007 Please, I am almost certain now that this is a mini PCI Express related issue. If you just search bcm4311 and page fault, every OS (linux, solaris, etc..) all points back to this being a problem with the mini-PCI Express slot. Here is an example of one discussion thread regarding thies: http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/lapt...uly/008404.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MsockoR Posted August 2, 2007 Share Posted August 2, 2007 mine works fine. i had to use a bunch of kext from 10.4.3. this was a while ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 2, 2007 Author Share Posted August 2, 2007 MsockoR, You have no information about your hardware in your post. What type of laptop do you have? Are you sure you have a Broadcom 4311 wifi card? Are you sure it is mini-PCI Express? If the answers are yes, could you please provide a list of the kexts you used from 10.4.3.? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MsockoR Posted August 4, 2007 Share Posted August 4, 2007 HP Pavilion DV6103nr Intel T1350 1.83 Solo Core 2Ghz PC-5300 Broadcom BCM4311 Mini-PCI Express i had more of a problem getting the ethernet to work than the broadcom. i had to do switch the en thing for the wireless device to en2. The kexts that i used were IO8211Family.kext, IOACPIFamily.kext, IOI2CFamily.kext, IONetworkingFamily.kext, IOPCIFamily.kext, IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext i hope that helps. i did this thing almost a year ago, so i don't really remember much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 4, 2007 Author Share Posted August 4, 2007 Could you be a little more precise... How does the switch thing (assuming you mean taping over pins) relate to en2? What exactly did you do with those kexts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonofacpu Posted August 4, 2007 Share Posted August 4, 2007 He refers to this (taken from the "Simple Broadcom Tutorial" on The Genius Bar): Final touches (Optional) * edit the interface config in order to use the airport utility instead of istumbler. QUOTE sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist * swap the en0 with en1 for that device. * Run disk util and repair perms * Please note that you may need to change the number to en2 if you have 2 onbaord pci lan cards. Sometimes your network card is already configured as an airport device and you do not need to swap the en # We could try downloading the 10.4.3 Combo updater, and use Pacifist to extract the relevant kext files. I'm trying that right now. EDIT: The updater doesn't have all the extensions... now to find them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanaguy19 Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 I sort of made some progress yesterday I tried IOPCIFamily.kext from 10.4.4 , after booting with that ioreg -l | grep IOPCI | grep 14e4 does recognize the slot for the pci express. The IOPCI object for the pci express is a child of IOPCI2PCIBridge, I guess the problem with this is that IOPCIBridge says !matched hence the airport card isnt recognized, also I had to use IO80211Family.kext from 10.4.5, can someone tell me wat kext files need to match IOPCIFamily.kext , ie part of the same release to get it to match , or where I can change the device id for the pciexpress bus/device Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 15, 2007 Author Share Posted August 15, 2007 Sonofacpu? Have you made any progress since I got you those files you asked for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanaguy19 Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 Sonofacpu? Have you made any progress since I got you those files you asked for? hi errandwolfe do you have access to 10.4.3 dvd? to get the relavent kext files? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 15, 2007 Author Share Posted August 15, 2007 hi errandwolfedo you have access to 10.4.3 dvd? to get the relavent kext files? Yes I do, sent them to sonofacpu a while back but haven't heard anything from him. PM me with the specific list of files you need and I will get them to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanaguy19 Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 Yes I do, sent them to sonofacpu a while back but haven't heard anything from him. PM me with the specific list of files you need and I will get them to you. pm'd you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 15, 2007 Author Share Posted August 15, 2007 Nirvana, You should have the files now. Sent them to you via PM and e-mail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanaguy19 Posted August 15, 2007 Share Posted August 15, 2007 Nirvana, You should have the files now. Sent them to you via PM and e-mail. thanks have you tried using all the relavent 10.4.3 kext's in your osx install, does that recognize the pci express bus ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 15, 2007 Author Share Posted August 15, 2007 I have not tried since I got the 10.4.3 DVD. Unfortunately I accidentally left my 4311 card at a friends house on an out of town trip. I was waiting to hear back from Sonofacpu to see if it worked. No sense in paying to have my friend ship it back to me if I know it is just going to sit in my drawer for another few months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanaguy19 Posted August 16, 2007 Share Posted August 16, 2007 well i tried the kext file you sent me errandwolfe, i copied all of them and osx wouldnt load, coz of ACPI version from 10.4.3 causes a kernel panic, with all the kext except that, its still the same as what I found with IOPCIFamily.kext from 10.4.5, the pci bus is recognized but its parent in ioreg output, IOPCI2PCI isnt recognized, it says !matched (not matched), hence the broadcom card isnt recognized, I am going to try and find the other 2 kext files and see if it helps also MsockoR , i checked, your laptop seems to have the 945gm chipset which is close to the 945gml chipset (945gml is budget version of 945gm i believe) the c500 series has. what version of OSX did you have wifi working on, also can you send me the kext files you mentioned in your post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonofacpu Posted August 17, 2007 Share Posted August 17, 2007 Sorry, been a little busy. Yes, the PCI-E bus works, but I haven't found out what else is failing. Seems that the Airport kext doesn't load because the OS thinks it isn't needed. For me, the card is active and matched, but it still doesn't work. When I have time I'll go into OSX to get some screenshots. That all I can tell. Oh, and, well, you already noticed it, don't use the ACPI kext, it kills the OS espectacularly xD, the ACPI detection is different on 10.4.9, so you can't use the 10.4.3 kext. Sorry for not posting this sooner... I've been trying kexts from different versions of OSX, but up to now no progress. I hope someone that knows a little more than me on how extensions work could explain us the problem. EDIT: Please PM me or errandwolfe to get the relevant extensions. I will be happy to know any strange message or error that may appear, to try to identify the problem. EDIT2: I didn't notice before. The light on my PC that tells if the Wi-Fi is activated lights up on MacOS. Seems that, like I said, it is detected correctly, but there is no driver to control it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanaguy19 Posted August 27, 2007 Share Posted August 27, 2007 is there a kext file which you can edit to have the pci-express recognized correctly, I wish there was some way we can get the wifi card to get correctly recognized Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonofacpu Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 With the kexts that errandwolfe sent you the PCI-E port should be correctly detected. The problem is I don't know what else is failing. My guess is the AppleAirPort2.kext, but maybe I'm wrong... Sorry, but I don't know much more... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 29, 2007 Author Share Posted August 29, 2007 Sonofacpu and Nirvana guy, I don't think we are going to be getting any help here. I have begged, pleaded, and posted but no one with the appropriate skill levels has responded. If either of you has access to IRC you may want to try talking to some of the devs on there. Unfortunately I am unable to access IRC so not much else I can do to help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanaguy19 Posted August 29, 2007 Share Posted August 29, 2007 Sonofacpu and Nirvana guy, I don't think we are going to be getting any help here. I have begged, pleaded, and posted but no one with the appropriate skill levels has responded. If either of you has access to IRC you may want to try talking to some of the devs on there. Unfortunately I am unable to access IRC so not much else I can do to help. Hi errandwolfe, I think we should maybe change the topic of this thread to , trouble with pci-express bus in 940gml chipset, btw I confirmed c500 series uses 940gml chipset (hp part surfer says 945gml), i tried to upgrade the processor to pentium dual core and it didnt work, 940gml are tied to celeron m's unfortunately Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 Unfortunately I can not change the name of this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonofacpu Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 I don't know... maybe we should create a new thread. At least we are up to something, the PCI-E port is detected correctly... I'm sure that there's a very simple problem that stops us... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted August 30, 2007 Author Share Posted August 30, 2007 You know this is just a thought....you can buy an actual airport express card. What I havent been able to figure out though is if that is a proprietary interface or actually mini pci-e (which it looks like to me in the pictures). If it is a standard mini-pci e we should try one and see if it is recognized. Thinking about it though, if it were that easy everyone would be buying them to replace cards like the 3945, so probably is proprietary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonofacpu Posted August 30, 2007 Share Posted August 30, 2007 I read something about that. It said that the interface was actually PCI-E, but it had a propietary shape or something like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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