FYI: PCLinuxOS 2007 and Broadcom 4318 Wireless on a Gateway MX6440 Laptop Work
May 22nd, 2007 by 
jay
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Distros, Laptops, Wireless
I loaded up the PCLinuxOS 2007 LiveCD last night and during the setup (of the LiveCD) it asks how you’d like to connect to the network either Ethernet, modem or wireless. On a total whim I choose Wireless. It then asked me to select the Windows driver which I luckily had on a USB drive. Unfortunately PCLinux could not yet see the external USB drive but it could see my Windows NTFS partition. So on another total whim I browsed the Windows partition looking for the Broadcom drivers I had downloaded from Gateway a while back. I found the file that I was looking for (bcmwl5a.inf) which has worked in the past with Xubuntu and my laptop and clicked OK. It did some stuff and then displayed a list of wireless networks. I must point out that I was not connected to a network in another way so at this point the wireless card is working. So I choose my wireless network and entered my security key and bang I’ve got a 54Mbps connection to the internet.
The only downside to this happy story is that PCLinuxOS kept freezing up for a few seconds at a time and it would not launch some applications.
But I am still impressed to get wireless working with a LiveCD.
Distros Laptops Wireless
June 7th, 2007 at 12:50 am
HEY! I need that file hella bad, could you sent that bcm43xx_microcode*.fw file? dude it would help me sooooooooo much
June 7th, 2007 at 9:15 am
You can download the zip file here - http://www.esnips.com/doc/51634ad4-3048-4f64-8198-8ffc5da183b6/WLanDriverBroadcom802.11g3.100.46.0
June 12th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I can use it too. Thanks!!
July 11th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
bcm43xx_microcode*.fw was not in that zip file. Did any one get it working. I am having the exact same problem