MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

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Subito Piano
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MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

Post by Subito Piano »

Hi all -- not sure if this should go here in the FossaPup forum or the "Users" forum...anyway.

Fossapup booted right up in a 2013 MacBook Air A1466, but no wireless card was recognized. Hunting for an answer, I found that the card is a Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.77.61.2 AirPortDriverBrcmNIC-1305.8). It seems it should work with the b43 or b43 legacy drivers included in FossaPup, but as I mentioned, no go. I did read about a conflict with some of these. Also, according to this post, "Broadcom 4360 actually comes with either of two distinct chips, 14E4:4360 and 14E4:43A0. There is no driver in Linux for the first one, while wl is an appropriate driver for the second one." Hmm...I couldn't tell which I have.

I tried downloading b43-fwcutter -- it seems to be made to extract what Puppy already comes preloaded with (the b43 drivers, regular and legacy). I tried the b43 firmware linux module updated by pemasu.

Now, I tried a Deb-based distro and it had no issues connecting via wi-fi. So my question is four-fold:

  • Any ideas where can I get the driver I need?

  • Can I somehow get the driver from the Mac OS?

  • How do I copy the working driver from the Deb-based distro that worked and install it in Puppy so it's automatically recognized by the Network Setup?

  • Is there a Windows driver I can get easily to use with NDISWrapper?

Of course, answering any one of these should solve my issue.

As always, thanks! Work is hectic, so I probably can't reply quickly.... :roll:

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Member since 2007. Currently running Fossa on a 2012 MacBook Air.
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Re: MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

Post by rockedge »

You might be able to adjust the kernel version or modules.....once you know what driver works on the Debian based stuff.

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Re: MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

Post by ozsouth »

@Subito Piano - this may help: viewtopic.php?p=34408#p34408 (Gal 6:10).

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Re: MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

Post by bigpup »

Sorry have to ask.

I assume it has a switch to turn WIFI on/off. Most laptops do.
So try using this switch to turn WIFI off/on.

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Re: MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

Post by BologneChe »

bigpup wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 12:27 pm

Sorry have to ask.

I assume it has a switch to turn WIFI on/off. Most laptops do.
So try using this switch to turn WIFI off/on.

No button to activate wifi on this MacBook. Activation from macOS.

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Re: MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

Post by BologneChe »

Hi @Subito Piano
Personally, I was unable to use the wifi of my iMac 2013 under Bionicpup64. I have had success with EasyOS Dunfell by adding the Broadcom driver from the distribution repository. It's a simple sharing that I do and I hope you find a solution for your MacBook :thumbup2:

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Re: MacBook Air - no wifi, no joy....

Post by Subito Piano »

Excellent! I will try these...

...maybe.

It turns out our resident photographer/graphic arts/photography person needs the Mac...!!! So IDK if she will end up keeping it or if it will return to me.

C'est la vie. Image

"God is love" - I John 4:16
Member since 2007. Currently running Fossa on a 2012 MacBook Air.
Still using Xenial 32 on my trusty 2007 IBM T60 warhorse. ♥
(A/V Linux for live softsynth needs)

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