Broadcom Ethernet card not working with new kernels - intermittently being registered as two different devices

[Greg Freemyer]

On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 1:31 PM, julie Sullivan <kernelmail.jms at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> Celejar (see message copied below) has been having problems with his
> Broadcom BCM4401-B0 Ethernet card not working on very recent kernels -
> it seems to be sporadically registered either as the correct device or
> as a completely different Broadcom device on a different subsystem and
> IRQ.
> He has emailed various mailing lists and, more recently, linux-kernel,
> netdev, devel.linuxdriverproject and the b44 driver maintainer but so
> far without any response.
> I would need to do a _lot_ of swotting up on device registration
> semantics to even know where to start looking, so can anyone here
> help? Any ideas?
> NOTE: _please do_ cc him as I don't think he is subscribed to kernelnewbies.
>
> Cheers
> Julie

I don't know that specific hardware, but maybe this can help

===
Broadcom is a mess.

This might help, but its a little older

http://old-en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_%28Wireless%29/Broadcom_BCM43xx

There are at least 4 totally different drivers that support some
broadcom hardware.

- The new native kernel driver (as of 2.6.37 I think)

- The old b43 / b44 drivers (GPL)

- The STA driver (not GPL)

- The NDISWRAPPER approach (uses the windows driver via linux, I think)

I've got one laptop that works with b43, but not with STA.

And one that works with STA, but not b43.

I haven't used the new kernel driver at all yet, nor have I had to
fall all the way back to NDISWRAPPER.

Good Luck
Greg