Installing WiFi on my DELL Latitude 420 running Fedora Core 6

I just installed Fedora Core 6. The WiFi was not detected (once again :( ).
Here are the steps to overcome this problem:

1) Find the type of card installed on your laptop by lspci -v:
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)

Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 0007
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 177
Memory at dfdfc000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [58] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Capabilities: [d0] Express Legacy Endpoint IRQ 0
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel

2) Download and install the latest ndiswrapper (ndiswrapper-1.27.tar in my case)

# cd ndiswrapper-1.27
# make uninstall
# make
# make install
# lspci -n
[root@localhost DRIVER]# ndiswrapper -h
install/manage Windows drivers for ndiswrapper
usage: ndiswrapper OPTION
-i inffile install driver described by 'inffile'
-a devid driver use installed 'driver' for 'devid'
-r driver remove 'driver'
-l list installed drivers
-m write configuration for modprobe
-ma write module alias configuration for all devices
-mi write module install configuration for all devices
-v report version information
where 'devid' is either PCIID or USBID of the form XXXX:XXXX,
as reported by 'lspci -n' or 'lsusb' for the card

3) Download the corresponding Windows driver, check this link.
In my case download the following driver http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R115321.EXE.
Then, proceed as follows:
# unzip R115321.EXE
# cd DRIVER
[root@localhost wifi_driver]# ll ./DRIVER/
total 992
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10102 Nov 14 2005 bcm43xx.cat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 555872 Nov 2 2005 bcmwl5.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 424320 Nov 2 2005 bcmwl5.sys
[root@localhost wifi_driver]# cd DRIVER/
[root@localhost DRIVER]# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
installing bcmwl5 ...

4) Check that it works and can be configured:
# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
sit0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"Polaris" Nickname:"Polaris"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:14:7C:B6:EC:14
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xx Security mode:restricted
Power Management:off
Link Quality:78/100 Signal level:-46 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Comment: At this stage you still won't see some of the details because you are not
connected yet. But, at least you will see something for the 'wlan0'.

5) Install the WiFi Radar:

# bzip2 -d ./wifi-radar-1.9.7.tar.bz2
# tar xvf ./wifi-radar-1.9.7.tar
# cd wifi-radar-1.9.7
# cp ./wifi-radar /usr/sbin
# mkdir /etc/wifi-radar
# cp ./wifi-radar.conf /etc/wifi-radar/.
# vi /etc/wifi-radar/wifi-radar.conf and change eth2 to wlan0!!!
# ./wifi-radar
Here are a few screen shots:

Click on "connect":

...and BINGO!



Good luck!!!

Guy