ndiswrapper.tcem

[roberts]

I have just packaged up ndiswrapper for Tiny Core.

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Title:          ndiswrapper.tcem
Description:    ndiswrapper for wireless card support
Version:        1.53
Author:         Giridhar Pemmasani 
Original-site:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper
Copying-policy: GPL
Size:           96K
Extension_by:   roberts
Comments:       ---------
Ndiswrapper for Tiny Core contains ndiswrapper proper and
ndiswrapper binary replacement for the perl script.
The ndiswrapper binary is by: Andrew Calkin of the GeeXboX project
It is also licensed by GPL
Current:        2008/12/28 First version


[Juanito]

..still struggling to get wireless going on my replacement laptop.

I have what windows refers to as a "Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card" and what linux refers to as :

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0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Dell Unknown device [1028:000b]
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 5
        Memory at efdfc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
If I follow the instructions here http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=16749 to the letter, I get:

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$ sudo ndiswrapper -i /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
Could not find section 'strings' in inf file!
Could not find section 'version' in inf file!
Is it possible this is due to the conversion from perl?

[roberts]

Could be. It is a shame that ndiswrapper depends on something so big as perl.

Note, you can actually do the ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf on another machine and transfer over the /etc/ndiswrapper/   results. Then on the target machine just do the modprobe ndiswrapper and you should get a wlan0 device that you can then configure via iwconfig

Note also that the native driver for the Broadcom BCM4310 is not hard to compile.

I was using ndiswrapper with the /etc/ part made elsewhere, but now I am using the native module.

[Juanito]

It is indeed the perl mod that seems to be the problem - after compiling the latest ndiswrapper (with perl - although ndiswrapper is not smart enought to find perl in /usr/local/bin), things work.

Note also that the native driver for the Broadcom BCM4310 is not hard to compile.

Ah-ha - you mean b43 (bcm4310 not yet supported) or "Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA driver" http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (not totally clear for me if it supports bcm4310 or not)?

Edit: The full ndiswrapper works, the "sans perl" ndiswrapper works after copying /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5 from the full ndiswrapper and your wl.ko native driver works - so, all good 

[roberts]

Good to hear everything works.

Now that we have a perl extension and you have compiled the latest ndiswrapper, we can drop the C version from GeeXBox used only the -i option and use the full version. Please post yours.

[Juanito]

No problem to post the full ndiswrapper - I need to move it from /usr to /usr/local first though.

Wouldn't it be better to keep the GeeXBox version? I like that it doesn't use perl and users could make a personal tce or similar to restore the ndiswrapper data to /etc after they generate it from the full ndiswrapper on a once-off basis...

[roberts]

Thanks.

Very true about GeeXbox C version. That is why I was drawn to it.
It worked flawless on the eeePC wireless using the install option.

I wonder if many know that you really only need to do the install (-i), really is just a parsing of the Windows inf file(s), only once.

But then, of course, as you pointed out, you need to tarball up /etc/ndiswrapper/<your_card_dir_here as a personal extension and this can even be done on a different machine.

Let's keep both and perhaps update the .info file.

[^thehatsrule^]

Would microperl work?  Would a stripped-down version of the full perl be useful?