01 April 2010

Stock F.14 BIOS, HP Mini 311, Apple AirPort Broadcom 4328 N

So there was absolutely something going on that I didn't quite understand the first time I attempted to install my Apple AirPort card on my HP Mini 311. Somehow, it would get stuck at boot up. I even thought at one point that it was VMWare wreaking havoc on my system that I immediately uninstalled it.

The "ParallelsUSBController" blah blah was NOT related to virtual machines at all - nope, not Parallels Deskstop. I got the idea of virtual machines being the root of my WiFi misery from a hackintosh forum - and reputable hackintosh forum at that but I won't name names since I wanna live peacefully and I've also forgotten the name and I'm too lazy to dig into my browsing history.

If you've installed a new bios and happen to have also installed a new card onto the 311's PCI slot, there's huge chance of you forgetting that you're running the machine directly plugged into electrical source - i.e. no battery installed (cause that's how we flash the bios, right? some "haduken" Win + B keys + Power switch with the netbook sans la batterie).

The fix? Put the battery back before you turn on your machine again.

Easy peasy, eh? Actually, not for me. I had to resort back to F.04 (cracked by icelord) thinking that F.14 was just plain impossible for my Mini 311. And all that was because I didn't put the battery pack back in first.

Now I'm happy that I now have a blue wireless switch led light instead of the perpetual red-orange glow which didn't match my svelte little machine at all. Profound reason, huh? I can't even toggle anything.


Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Written on my resurrected HP Mini 1001TU.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are all just humans :-)

BTW, have you take a look at netkas.org ? Freaking frighting...

LeMaurien19 said...

It was for April's Fools' =)

Tevvie said...

Hi madame ;),

Is it a possibility that i can contact you directly through lets say msn or something?

I'm eager to make the stock WiFi card of the 311c work!

I dived in the IO80211Family.kext and found some interesting stuff...

In the AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext > Contents > Info.plist i found a reference to the mini's WiFi card:

pci14e4,4312

If the card works under Leopard why shuldn't it work under Snow Leopard right?

Talk soon x

LeMaurien19 said...

^My 311 has a combo BT/WiFI card with Broadcom 4312 chip. It doesn't work. OS X Snow Leo sees it as pci14e4,4315 but can't drive it even with the 4315 instructions it knows.

These newer cards are like "low power consuming" versions of the "normal" Broadcom 4312 cards shipped with the earlier Mini 1000's which btw, works brilliantly with Snow Leopard.

Other hackers, prasys notably, thinks that it's basically the fact that the cards cannot be switched on by Snow Leopard that they don't work. Blame that on HP's lame idea of implementing "soft switches" on their PCI infrastructure.

So in essence, that info.plist in the IO80211Family.kext is already an old friend of mine ;-) Been there, done that. Had my share of many a stressful and sleepless nights.

But that's based on a 311-1002TU with a combo card (Broadcom 4312HMGB card to be exact).

Tevvie said...

Oke cool cool, you've cleared things up. I've a Compaq Mini 311c-1050SD to be exact. What is the easiest way to check my exact WiFi card...(I'm on Windows XP atm :P)

Delta Luna said...

I installed Win 7 and OSX Snow on my HP mini 311c.
I bought an Apple Airport BCM4321 an placed it on the full lenght slot on the 311.

The problem is that I cann see it in win and in osx, but:
- in win 7 I have a red croos near it in network adapters
- in osx I cannot activat it

Can someone please tell me what I did wrong and how can I fix this!

I have the same wi-fi card running at 100% on my Asus z53s.

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