The b43 drivers (bcm43xx in mainline kernels, b43 and b43legacy in wireless-2.6 and 2.6.24 and later) are drivers for the 802.11 B/G family of wireless chips Broadcom produces. I think that prior to 8.04 the driver was named bcm43xx, and now it is simply b43. If when doing a fresh install of Hardy, i.e. 8.04, your Broadcom BCM43xx based wireless didn’t work, here is a single command that will most likely turn it on:

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

Now simply activate the driver, in case it didn’t do it automatically: Menu -> System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers

My friends notebook, from HP, is based on bcm4318 chipset and the above worked like a charm.

As of today, the following are the supported chipsets by the b43 driver:

• bcm4303 (802.11b-only chips)
• bcm4306
• bcm4309 (only the 2.4GHz part)
• bcm4311 rev 1 / bcm4312
• bcm4311 rev 2 / bcm4312 (needs patches for 2.6.24)
• bcm4318

and unsupported are:

• The 802.11a part of the 4309 and 4312 is not supported.
• There is no support for any Draft 802.11n features.
• BCM 4328/4329

Here you can find the latest information on this driver.

If the above didn’t work for you, then try thr ndiswrapper guide, found here.

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