E6410 Owner's Thread

I wonder if you got an Intel 6200 or 6300, would that be any better?

 

There's a great forum for those using my OS which is MX-14, a spinoff of wonderful MEPIS, a LInux distro. I'm asking for help in that forum and there's another very long thread of this very same matter of trying to get the same Broadcom wireless hardware to connect wirelessly to the Internet. I'm not giving up yet-- maybe with help I'll get this laptop to work wirelessly.

Broadcom offers the Linux driver file for this particular hardware and that file comes in both 32 bit and 64 bit. I just have to find out how to use that software. Also, while my MX-14 OS is currently only written for 32 bit, I suppose I should only use the Broadcom 64 bit driver file since the E6410 system is 64 bit. Correct? [When I was offered 32 bit and 64 bit for other software -- such as Teamviewer and Google Call Phone -- those in the MEPIS forum told me to install only 32 bit software even though my laptop is a 64 bit machine. Maybe this means I really should only use the 32 bit Broadcom driver software file for my hardward-- I'm confused.]

 

No, your driver needs to match the architecture of the OS.

 

OK thanks Robin24k-- I'll download the 32 bit Broadcom Linux driver file for the laptop and then see how far I get in correcting this problem.

 

i am on e6410 with the same wireless card on ubuntu, wireless works out of the box. the driver for this card is available readily as a kernel module i think. It seems mx-14 is based on debian like ubuntu so this should help software installation - Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers - Ask Ubuntu

 

Hi mzzzzb,

Thanks for the info.

I got help in the MEPIS/MX forum. One top guy there told me to run a certain long command he created. I think after running that something was set right. But I still tried something else: I installed and ran ceni-mx (which apparently is a version of ceni prepared for MX). That did the trick and my E6410 easily connects wirelessly to the Internet. However, with re-boots I have to do a few quick steps in re-configuring ceni-mx for my system and I'm OK again. Maybe using ceni-mx doesn't keep the configuration that lets me connect wirelessly or else the configuration is lost when re-booting-- I don't know. But I'm happy that with just a few quick entries I have to make in ceni-mx, I'm again on the Internet wirelessly.

 

Sorry for not coming to visit the forum for a while.
Hope you resolve the wifi problem already.
I noticed that many laptop actually using the "screen' as the antenna, so make sure the connection inside, from the wifi card to the lcd is securely connected. Once I have a new lcd cover and as the connectors was so new, it was hard to click them it, I just connect them loosely, and after I switched on the laptop, there are simply can't find any network at all. So try look at this may help.

 

I've noticed when I look at BIOS settings that the hour under "Date/Time" is always wrong. I change it and another day when I look, it's off again by many, many hours. Also, I've noticed that once I correct the hour, there's no "Apply"-- the "Apply" button is dimmed out, disabled.

What's wrong here and why is the "Apply" disabled when I want to set the hour?

Is this hour-being-way-off problem a flaw/bug in the BIOS?

Does this hour-being-way-off problem happen to all owners of the Dell E6410?

[My OS is Linux. This Dell E6410 came with no OS which is what I wanted. I buy used computers/laptops and install Linux as sole OS. I think this hour-being-way-off problem has nothing to do with the OS. Right?]

 

Is your CMOS battery dead? I'd say that's the most common culprit for this kind of issue.

It's normal for date/time changes to apply automatically, without the need for the apply button.

 

Thanks for the help Commander Wolf. Maybe I'll have to take the unit apart to look for the CMOS battery. Is it the standard round, coin-type battery? If you know the size and number of the battery (for US users), please tell me what it is.

But the minutes entry in the BIOS is always correct, unlike the hour entry. Why would the minutes be correct when the hour is always wrong? Shouldn't both hour and minutes be wrong if this has to do with a dying or dead CMOS battery?

And why does my OS show the correct time? Since I don't always look at the time that the OS shows, maybe it's been wrong too-- I don't know. If the OS time is always correct while the hour entry in the BIOS is always wrong, does this mean that the OS is retrieving from the Internet the correct time as soon as I connect wirelessly to the Internet?