Hey y'all,

I'm new to BSD and have just installed FreeBSD and KDE Plasma on my Dell Latitude E5420.

My wifi is not working, but LAN is. I've read that my wifi card is not supported by FreeBSD (Broadcom) but that it could possible to create the drivers myself using XP drivers and ndisscvt. I got the .inf and .sys file of the device driver and I've read the manual but I feel like I am not any smarter after that. Can someone please guide me through and explain it to me as I were five?

Thanks in advance.



Device Info

Model: Dell Latitude E5420 (refurbished)

OS: FreeBSD 13.0 (KDE Plasma 5.22.5)

Wifi card in question: Dell DW 1530 802.11n 1JKGC BCM43228 WiFi MiniPCI Express Dualband, and it also shows up as BCM43228.

As I said, I have Windows drivers for this device. LAN works and is listed as bge0, and I think my wifi is listed as bge0:none. At least I think that is my wifi.


Once again: Thanks in advance!
 
I've read that my wifi card is not supported by FreeBSD (Broadcom) that it could possible to create the drivers myself using XP drivers and ndisscvt. I got the .inf and .sys file of the device driver and I've read the manual but I feel like I am not any smarter after that. Can someone please guide me through and explain it to me as I were five?
Yeah, ndisgen(8), honestly, not worth the trouble. Pick up a cheap USB wireless dongle you know is supported.
 
Yeah, ndisgen(8), honestly, not worth the trouble. Pick up a cheap USB wireless dongle you know is supported.
Yeah I figured that already, but I really don't want to spend money on a laptop I barely use anyway. Just hoped to get it to work with ndisgen. If that won'T work I might just switch back to Linux and come back when the next version releases. I know that probably won't help the community here but idk. Was kinda hoping to get it to work with the hardware I already have and maybe give the community here the drivers if anyone needs them as well? Honestly no idea about the ifs and hows but reading about ndisgen just seemed like a nice feature to have
 
ndisgen(8) is a neat trick, but it just doesn't work as intended. I don't think there's anything wrong with the tool (or the idea) itself, just that the windows drivers tend to be rather dodgy. It doesn't matter how great the tool is, if you put garbage in, garbage will come out.
 
ndisgen(8) is a neat trick, but it just doesn't work as intended. I don't think there's anything wrong with the tool (or the idea) itself, just that the windows drivers tend to be rather dodgy. It doesn't matter how great the tool is, if you put garbage in, garbage will come out.
How do you mean, 'it doesn't work as intended'? The way I see it, is, either my wifi will work or it won't. The state of it now is that it doesn't. So I don't really have anything to lose trying, have I?
I would've tried ndisgen(8) already but I don't really get how to use it
 
What part of it aren't you getting? It's an interactive script, just run it, answer the questions it asks and see how far it gets you.
Okay, I have the drivers in my home directory and the console is opened in there too.

I typed:
ndiscvt -O -i bcmwl6.inf -s bcmwl6.sys -n BCM43228 -o -

It gives me the following:
ndiscvt: line 13: e: syntax error.

What did I do wrong?
 
Example: SYSDIR="/usr/src11/sys"
you specify where the system directory is located ie '/usr/src/sys"

You can checkout the sources with either SVN or Git: SVN is being deprecated
Code:
svnlite co https://svn.freebsd.org/base/releng/11.0 /usr/src
or
Code:
git clone --single-branch -b releng/11.0 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd /usr/src

It looks like you either don't have the kernel source code installed, or have it installed in an unusual place. On a FreeBSD system the source is typically in /usr/src/sys/, but I don't know exactly how PC-BSD handles FreeBSD source code.

I have defined SYSDIR with set SYSDIR=/path/to/10.1 and setenv SYSDIR /path/to/10.1...
export SYSDIR
 
its the someone posted the inf files in unicode and im guessing
the ndisgen tool solves the issue where you have to manually convert the file: i myself have
this card:and its saying in the inf file theres no reference to broadcom 43228 so even if
the driver converted properly might be why wlan0 ndis0 isnt showing up: you should be
running FreeBSD 9 like i am:

Restoring Ports Tree:

cd /
fetch "http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/amd64/9.0-RELEASE/ports.txz"
tar xzf ports.txz
rm -Rf ports.txz

in /etc/make.conf we must add:
# added by username : please note any indicated spaces:
MASTER_SITE_BACKUP?= \
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive-ports-distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR}/
MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE=?= ${MASTER_SITE_BACKUP}

Restoring Package Repository:

You can add the setenv line to your ~/.cshrc
we setenv PACKAGESITE ftp://http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/amd64/packages-9.0-release/Latest/
pkg_add -r xorg-minimal

now the only thing i've noticed is only add it IF you WANT it: and you have to sort of make
a list because once you delete everything its gone and once its gone its gone :

Getting XFree86/Xorg/X11/X Windows Working:
pkg_add -r xorg-minimal xkbcomp
now you want an nVidia Driver:
we use:
mkdir /root/Drivers
cd /root/Drivers
fetch "http://uk.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/FreeBSD-x86_64/319.17/NVIDIA-FreeBSD-x86_64-319.17.tar.gz"
tar xzf NVIDIA-FreeBSD-x86_64-319.17.tar.gz
cd NVIDIA-FreeBSD-x86_64-319.17
make install
DONE: reboot and run nvidia-xconfig and in /boot/loader.conf nvidia_load="YES" and can now reboot and run when in .xinitrc of your /root folder
ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session startkde

Getting KDE3/KDE4-Plasma-Workspace-Desktop Working:
KDE3: subversion kde-baseapps(Konqueror) kde-workspace kdepim kdehier
pkg_add -r
"Perhaps it threw a xkeymap or something package error in-between we want synaptics also
"I would try it WITHOUT the kde-baseapps and if you want kdm you can use that
instead of startkde

 
you should be
running FreeBSD 9 like i am
FreeBSD 9 has been EoL since 2016 and is not supported any more.

 
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