Acer Aspire 5002 NWLCi WIFI on AMD64 Linux
Aspire 5002 NWLCi is a cheap AMD64 Turion based laptop ($999 retail price) that comes with Linpus Linux Basic Edition preinstalled. Unfortunately this is a very unusable configuration, because it's an outdated 32 bit Linux, with text only interface, and without the driver for basic things such as the internal modem and Wifi.
My girlfriend just brought this laptop, and to be usable I had to install Fedora Core 4 (AMD64 version) on the laptop. The only problem is the Wifi driver (because she never uses the internal modem) which is bases on Broadcomm chipset (as you might already know, there hasn't been any open source driver for it).
The first thing that comes to my mind is ndiswrapper, a wrapper for Windows driver to be used on Linux. But there is just one problem: I can't find the 64 bit Windows driver. Ndiswrapper on 64 bit machine must use 64 bit Windows driver. The driver is not on the CD and is not on the acer site (at least not when i searched for 5002 series). But it turns out that the latest Acer Ferari series uses the same Wifi chipset, and it comes with 64 bit Windows (which of course has the 64 bit driver). As you might guess, I downloaded the driver for the Ferari and it works like a charm.
Aspire 5002 NWLCi is a cheap AMD64 Turion based laptop ($999 retail price) that comes with Linpus Linux Basic Edition preinstalled. Unfortunately this is a very unusable configuration, because it's an outdated 32 bit Linux, with text only interface, and without the driver for basic things such as the internal modem and Wifi.
My girlfriend just brought this laptop, and to be usable I had to install Fedora Core 4 (AMD64 version) on the laptop. The only problem is the Wifi driver (because she never uses the internal modem) which is bases on Broadcomm chipset (as you might already know, there hasn't been any open source driver for it).
The first thing that comes to my mind is ndiswrapper, a wrapper for Windows driver to be used on Linux. But there is just one problem: I can't find the 64 bit Windows driver. Ndiswrapper on 64 bit machine must use 64 bit Windows driver. The driver is not on the CD and is not on the acer site (at least not when i searched for 5002 series). But it turns out that the latest Acer Ferari series uses the same Wifi chipset, and it comes with 64 bit Windows (which of course has the 64 bit driver). As you might guess, I downloaded the driver for the Ferari and it works like a charm.
posted by yohanes at 4:30 PM
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