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So I have recently installed FreeBSD 10.1 (now UEFI native!) on my Mid-2012 MacBook Pro. The install went fine, except for one problem: my wireless card wasn't recognised. I looked into bwi and bwn as drivers, and selected bwn. I installed the required firmware from ports (as outlined in the man page), added it to loader.conf, reebooted, and...

...nothing. Still wasn't detected, even after a manual re-scan in bsdconfig. Upon further inspection (and PCI probes), I discovered that the card was actually being identified correctly, but had no driver associated with it.

So, does the bwn driver even support this model card? Should I use something else?

NOTE: I have come across many possible "solutions" on my internet research, but none have worked. Any advice is appreciated, but something that you actually know works would be best. Has anyone done this before? Any idea how to make it work?

felixphew
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  • Did you read this thread? Found after doing a basic Google search for FreeBSD and BCM43224? https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/macbook-air-and-freebsd-9-0-x64.35176/ – Giacomo1968 Nov 17 '14 at 21:43
  • @JakeGould Yes, I did read that, but there isn't an answer there. Or if there is, I missed it. Could you please expand this into an answer if you believe this solves my problem? – felixphew Nov 18 '14 at 02:04
  • @felixphew did you try to select `bwi` instead of `bwn`? I am also planning to install FreeBSD on my MacBook Pro 9,2. So please let me know if you have a good experience. – Alexander Perechnev Jan 23 '15 at 05:47
  • @AlexanderPerechnev It didn't work for me, but it might work for you - what model? – felixphew Jan 27 '15 at 02:39
  • @AlexanderPerechnev Also, remember that Ethernet still works fine, so don't be put off installing - it runs really well! – felixphew Jan 27 '15 at 02:40
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    @felixphew FreeBSD is really much better then Mac OS X for me! It works much faster and more simple than any Linux! You can make your WiFi working via `ndis` using windows-drivers, it works fine for me. – Alexander Perechnev Jan 27 '15 at 08:56
  • @AlexanderPerechnev Hi Alex, did you get your NIC working using ndis? What is your NIC, BCM43223 as well? I have exact same problem and I want to know if ndis works or not.. – Jay Somedon Aug 20 '16 at 08:55

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So after much research and interaction with the FreeBSD community, I have established that this model of card is not supported (yet!). The bwn(4) driver is constantly under development, and hopefully the BCM4331 (along with many other newer Broadcom cards) will have stable drivers in the near future.

I did briefly have working support through ndiswrapper, but this technology appears to be going the way of the dodo, in multiple parts (Windows drivers old enough to be supported are getting rarer, and FreeBSD seems to be deprecating the technology).

In the meantime, I'm using an external USB wireless dongle. To others with this card I would recommend this, or else doing without Wi-Fi (or moving to Linux, which has decent support for this chip through one of two drivers).

felixphew
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I've found this page: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.1R/hardware.html, where we can read the next information:

The bwi(4) driver supports Broadcom BCM43xx based wireless devices, including:

Apple Airport Extreme

Apple Airport Extreme

...

So I can say that you have to choose bwi instead of bwn.

Alexander Perechnev
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  • Tried that one too: no luck. It only supports older models. – felixphew Jan 27 '15 at 02:38
  • @felixphew yes you're right. It doesn't work for me also. Because `bwi` and `bwn` do not support `bcm4331`. I've described this problem in another tread: http://superuser.com/questions/869641/bcm4331-wifi-doesnt-work-on-freebsd-10-1 My device is MacBook Pro mid 2012 (also known as MacBookPro9,2) with Broadcom BCM4331. I am working with WiFi via `ndis` now, and it seems that I have to program a driver for my wifi-device, so I think you have the same problem and maybe new driver will support your device also. – Alexander Perechnev Jan 27 '15 at 08:52