NetGear WNA3100 (Broadcom BCM43231)

[silentsnake]

Hi there,

I'm trying to get my WLAN usb dongle working with OpenELEC. I tried some advices I read in the forums but had no luck. :-( Maybe someone can help...

The WLAN interface is not listed in "ifconfig". Only the regular loopback-device (lo) and the Gigabit connection is showing up.

"lspci" lists the device correctly as "Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0846:9020 NetGear, Inc. WNA3100(v1) Wireless-N 300 [Broadcom BCM43231]".

After connection the device /var/logs/messages says "Feb 25 21:56:18 openelec user.info kernel: [ 872.229979] usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd" but nothing further.

I tried to change network 1 to wlan0 and provided my SSID and passphrase within the configuration addon, but didn't change anything. (Just tried because I ran out of ideas, since there is no wlan0 interface it can't connect to anything.)

I tested it with the current stable (1.0.2) and the latest eden testing build (OpenELEC-Generic.i386-devel-20120210053558-r9791.tar.bz2).

Any idea to get this working? Or is it not possible?

In any case - thank you a lot for reading and maybe your help. :-)

[chewitt]

There is no native Linux driver for the BCM43231 chipset at the moment so the only way to use the card with Linux is via the Windows driver and ndiswrapper, which is not something OpenELEC supports (or plans to support). Sorry..

[silentsnake]

Thanks for your answer. I got it working with arch linux and ndiswrapper and will stick to this configuration for now. But I plan to build a new system for OpenELEC. Is there a list of chipsets supported in OpenELEC? Or is it sufficient if there is a native linux driver for it?
Is the Llano platform (especially the GPU video encoder) supported or should i go for Intel?

Thanks!

[chewitt]

Check what local retailers can offer you and then cross-reference the chipset(s) against the "linux wireless" database to see what support exists. If a chipset is listed as supported by the kernel we either already support the card or it's a trivial code change to add it. Realtek cards are partially supported by the kernel with others requiring a binary driver (we support some but not all, they can be added reasonably easily). Atheros cards are well supported by the kernel. Broadcom cards have a reputation for being more problematic than other card vendors.

I've no idea on the Liano chips. It's not my area of interest.