Long ago I removed XP from Dell Inspiron 1501 and loaded CentOS6 this being the only OS I could find that would override the Dell Quickset facility

G

George Warburton

New Member
Joined
Aug 28, 2018
Messages
3
Reaction score
1
Credits
19
The Quickset facility controls the wifi connection and all systems I have tried since will not override it. Hence I could not get an internet connection on any of them.
Any ideas about a system that will allow a wifi connection since CentOS6 is long gone?
 


George Warburton said:
Any ideas about a system that will allow a wifi connection

Dell Inspiron 1501​

Click to expand...

bloody hell, one of the first 64 bit Dell lappies, from 2005,
first HOW much Ram do you have [the max for this machine is 4 gb [but it may have only come with 500mb] you need at least 2 gb to run a lightweight distribution, or 4gb for full-blown ones,

Being an old dell I guess it has built in wi-fi then it may be an older Broadcom BCM43** wi-fi, drivers for this are and have been available to Linux users for many a long year, but you need alternative connection ethanet or teatherd mobile to download them

my now departed Insperon was from 2008 and never gave any problems and with 2gb ram it ran MINT LMDE6 faultlessly

Download LMDE 6 - Linux Mint

Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up to date and comfortable desktop operating system.
www.linuxmint.com www.linuxmint.com
 
Brickwizard said:
bloody hell, one of the first 64 bit Dell lappies, from 2005,
first HOW much Ram do you have [the max for this machine is 4 gb [but it may have only come with 500mb] you need at least 2 gb to run a lightweight distribution, or 4gb for full-blown ones,

Being an old dell I guess it has built in wi-fi then it may be an older Broadcom BCM43** wi-fi, drivers for this are and have been available to Linux users for many a long year, but you need alternative connection ethanet or teatherd mobile to download them

my now departed Insperon was from 2008 and never gave any problems and with 2gb ram it ran MINT LMDE6 faultlessly

Download LMDE 6 - Linux Mint

Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up to date and comfortable desktop operating system.
www.linuxmint.com www.linuxmint.com
Click to expand...
The Dell currently has Manjaro loaded and operational (apart from wifi). This system needs at least 1gb Ram. The hieroglyphics on the base of the laptop include Broadcom BRCM94311MCG. I have loaded a few systems including I think LMDE5 but no wifi.
 
specs for that laptop indicate it has a 10/100 ethernet port - an ethernet to wifi adapter may work.
 
Y'know, this makes NO sense to me.

Our ancient, now-deceased Inspiron 1100 - from 2002 - came with all that Dell Quickset crap. Had a row of dedicated buttons for it, above the keyboard.

I never used it, or bothered with it under XP. I soon discovered that, under ANY Linux distro you cared to name, those buttons were completely inactive. Didn't work at all.

The 1100 never came with wifi. All it had was an Ethernet port. So I used a USB wifi adapter.....the 1100, along with its big brother, the 5100, were the first two machines in Dell's lineup to be outfitted with the then-new USB 2.0 ports. Big bro had wifi, Little bro didn't.

The wifi adapter worked fine, under every distro I threw it at.

I then obtained a brand-new (though "old stock") CardBus wifi adapter from NetGear for the CardBus slot above the drive caddy, which freed-up a precious USB port (the 1100 only came with 2 of these). This worked sweetly all the way up till the 1100's demise in mid-2021.

@theLegionWithin :-

I tried one of those things. What was it they called 'em.....a "bridge adapter", or summat similar? Never could make it work.....not under Linux, anyway. Mind you, this was back in the days of the early 3-series kernels. I'm willing to concede that the process may be relatively trouble-free nowadays; we ARE talking about several years ago now, and the kernel's come on a LONG way since then.


Mike. ;)
 
Last edited:
If you have a spare USB port then perhaps your best option would be to purchase a Comfast mini USB adaptor with the RTL8188CUS chipset, it works with all linux builds
 
CRUX runs ~95MB of RAM. With fluxbox/openbox/blackbox (examples) you can get less than ~120MB RAM usage at boot. Also Antix linux is quite good at RAM usage if CRUX is too much.
 
I have a 1501 with 1 GB of RAM and it has a BCM4311. lspci lists the device, so I suppose it must be "visible" to the system but when I try to start up wifi, the system reports "no wifi device found". It looks like the "Fn-F2" key combination should enable wifi (i suppose that's some kind of hardware on/off toggle) but it apparently doesn't. Ethernet works just fine, of course.

All this under Tiny Core 15.0 / x86_64. Whatever MS Windows version was on this machine is long gone.

I haven't quite given up on it yet but I'll confess it's not a priority project for me right now - the thing is old and slow and has a faulty keyboard in addition to the wifi not working. and both the main battery and the CMOS battery are long dead.
 
MikeRocor said:
lspci lists the device, so I suppose it must be "visible" to the system but when I try to start up wifi, the system reports "no wifi device found". I
Click to expand...
A thought, back in the dim and distant past, you had to install the drivers before the wi-fi was seen
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Staff online

Members online

Total: 504 (members: 4, guests: 500)

Latest posts

Top