Recommended Wireless Card for Dell Latitude D830?

Question

Can anyone recommend a specific brand and model of wireless card that I can buy to replace the (completely worthless) BCM4311 that came with my Latitude D830? I've given up on trying to get the existing DW1390 card up and running, and I'm ready to buy a new card -- as long as it will work with Meerkat RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX, without any intervention on my part. If I have to do ANYTHING other than reinstall Meerkat to bring up this laptop on a wireless connection then I'm not interested.

And yes, I've tried every damned one of the thousands of "fixes" and hacks for the BCM4311 on the interwebs, and none of them work. At all. So if there's a pin-compatible (non-PCMCIA slot) replacement for the DW1390 that will work with Ubuntu I'm ready to lay out some cash.

When you say “pin-compatible (non-PCMCIA slot)”, what exactly do you mean? I suppose it's a MiniPCI or MiniPCI Express slot, can you tell us which? — JanC, Oct 27 '10 at 17:49
Yes in regards to the MiniPCI slot. I wanted to make sure any recommendations wouldn't include jamming a PCMCIA card into the side of the laptop. :-) — jerhewet, Oct 27 '10 at 19:24

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 27 '10 at 14:24

1

I've used both the Intel 3945ABG and 4965AGN with success in a D820 on an older version of Ubuntu.

answered Oct 27 '10 at 14:24

Cry Havok

1,322

Thanks! Just placed my order for the 4965AGN and will let you know (a la green checkmarks) how it goes! – jerhewet Oct 27 '10 at 19:29
Works like a charm! Whacked the DW1390 with a hammer until it was a pile of dust, then dumped the dust in the trash. Feeling much better now. – jerhewet Oct 30 '10 at 13:32

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

You might not even have the Dell Latitude D830 anymore but I decided to answer your question to help others that might have the same difficulty.

I have just answered a question like yours, posted this month. Check out the link below:

https://askubuntu.com/a/428695/254056

Broadcom, the manufacturer of Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Minicard (chipset Broadcom BCM 4311 802.11 b/g), which came with my machine (it may vary among computers of the same model), released in 2009 the driver/package 'bcmwl-kernel-source' with open source-code for use with Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. However, many compatibilities issues between the driver and the kernell have been reported ever since. You can check out more details about that at:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bcmwl/+bug/1119842

Since it wasn't fixed until now, the solution is to remove the 'bcmwl-kernel-source' package and install 2 others, being one proprietary (closed code), as I described at the links above.

Cheers!!

Recommended Wireless Card for Dell Latitude D830?

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