Broadcom BCM4312 WLAN-abg MiniCard

11abg WLAN CardBus/MiniPCI Chipsets

Usage: To find other modems with the same chipset.

All drivers, downloads & info on this site are found via the modem.
Each Modem Manufacturers’ page also has external web-links, where available.

General Information

This range of 802.11abg Wireless LAN chipsets are a development of the 11b and 11bg WLAN chipsets started with the Broadcom BCM4301 chip (the precise chips used are not yet confirmed), and began with the BCM4306/BCM2050 chip combo.

Broadcom supplied model-designs--“Reference NICs”--for each range of chipset to their OEM customers, and also provided drivers for those NICs that were guaranteed to work with a matrix of laptops, Access Points, Wireless Stations and Servers. This is the set of 802.11abg DualBand Reference NICs for each chipset in the range:

• BCM4306:
• BCM94306CB Cardbus
• BCM94306MP Mini-PCI
• BCM4309:
• BCM94309CB Cardbus
• BCM94309MP Mini-PCI
• BCM4318:
• BCM94318MP Mini-PCI
• BCM4312 (11abg):
• BCM94312MCAG Mini-Card

The OEM and ODM NICs tended to be straight clones of the original Broadcom Reference NICs (but not always). Clone adapters can use the original Broadcom Reference drivers unchanged across many products. Broadcom made those drivers backwards compatible to earlier designs, and also made them unified across both these and the BCM43xx 11b & 11bg designs.

The one problem with cross-mixing drivers from different suppliers is when the manufacturer customises the adapter. This seems to be a particular issue with mini-PCI adapters that end up being supplied together with a computer, where the EEPROM reference within the NIC is customised for the Computer manufacturer. If the vendor and device id are the same (they usually are) then this can usually be fixed by removing the subdevice and subvendor IDs from the .inf files (use at own risk).

Extra Info

Known Problems

• GINA validated wireless networks that use certificates must use the machine store and not a user store as the user has not logged in yet.
• With certificate based networks, it is an invalid configuration to have a certificate chain that crosses user and machine cert store boundaries.
• When a user exports a series of preferred networks, and an EAP type is selected that requires a certificate, it is not possible to export where in the machine to get the certificate, as each machine stores certificates in a unique location (it is a hash function).
• When running Afterburner enabled subsystems, the TCP/IP setting within Windows must be enlarged to gain the full effect of the throughput opportunity.
• The control panel and tray application support WPA and CCX in an integrated fashion on Windows 2k, XP and later. The implementation is not production worthy for Windows 9x or Me.
• The Soft-AP feature (Windows XP only) does NOT support Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). It does support WEP.
• When disabling the Soft-AP feature, and running Microsoft WPA supplicants, you will need to wait for ~30 seconds after disabling SoftAP for the system to be configurable again.
• CCX support cannot run properly in a multi-adapter configuration.
• In Chinese and Japanese versions of Windows, installing an unsigned driver will result in bcmwl5.sys not getting updated.

Uninstaller

Important to use Control Panel » Add or Remove Programs to remove, and not to use the driver configuration tab within System Properties.

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