[Chester LUG] Yesterday's meeting

[Nic Deane]

Dear Les,

I went to the Rake and Pikel last night but was a little late - arriving 
about 8 pm. The landlord was very friendly and gave me the Wifi code so 
I could get on and do a bit of work and enjoy a bitter while I waited. 
Obviously, last night didn't work for folk because no-one else turned up 
- but maybe next month.....

Anyway, I wonder if anyone could give me a bit of advice? Steve very 
kindly sorted out my little Samsung NC110 (Korean keyboard) netbook a 
month or so ago and it worked brilliantly while we were in the States.
It's still working brilliantly - and I'm so glad that all my files are 
on it because...but now I have a problem with my other Linux Mint laptop 
- a Dell Inspiron 1564. If I didn't have my trusty little netbook I 
would really be in trouble!!

I run Mint 15 Cinnamon on my Dell 1564 - Microsoft free - and 
everything's been great until last week. For some reason my wireless 
seems to have packed up. The other two computers in the house (my wife's 
Windows Dell 1764 and my little Samsung) don't have any problems 
connecting wirelessly to our BT broadband hub, however, my Dell Inspiron 
1564 does!

I know the Broadcom B4312 chip can be a bit problematical and so I've 
tried to go through all the ideas on the forums - including downloading 
the Sourceforge bcm4312.deb package and applying it. This seems to be 
the best thing but it just keeps trying to connect to my BT hub - and 
failing. However, it's better than any of the other alternatives I've 
been trying fruitlessly for the last three days. They were all saying 
'out of range' (e.g. purging bcmwl-kernel-source and installing 
firmware-b43-lpphy-installer or doing the opposite and re-installing 
bcmwl-kernel-source!). Maybe like the problem Steve solved there's an 
easy answer but I just can't see it!

Can the Broadcom chip fail and completely pack up? Is this my problem?

Any wise advice would be most welcome!

Many thanks in advance,

Nic Deane