Debian Hardware :: How To Manually Install Broadcom B43 Driver

But let'start from the scratch.The wireless card interface in my laptop is one belonging to the "infamous", not Linux-friendly broadcom family.it is the BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (PCI-ID 14E4:4315). I downloaded the .iso image file of Wheezy 7.5 from the official repositories, put it on a USB key, and started the installation process with no internet connection. But during the installation, the installer informed me that some firmware was missing, i.e. ucode.fw and ucode15.fw.

Anyway, I went along and finished the installation. Of course, running Wheezy, I could not connect my laptop to my wireless modem just because of this problem, and so I needed a solution to install the right driver(s) but without a connection in my laptop! After long googling, finally I have found the solution [URL] ...., that is using the b43-fwcutter to extract the firmware from the Broadcom's proprietary driver. I simply report here the procedure to be followed, in a clear way:

By means of another PC with an internet connection, download the b43-fwcutter (version 018) from here: URL...Copy this file in the PC where you want the driver to be installed.Extract the b43-fwcutter tarball in a folder (tar xjf b43-fwcutter-018.tar.bz2, if you use the terminal), and then:

cd b43-fwcutter-018
make
su
(password)
make install

Now, after installing b43-fwcutter, download version 5.100.138 of Broadcom's proprietary driver from here: URL...Copy this file in the PC where you want the driver to be installed.Extract this tarball in a folder (the same as previous or another one): tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 and finally extract the firmware from it:

su
(password)
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o.

The standard place in Wheezy 7.5 where firmware is installed to is /lib/firmware. In another distribution this could be different.