WiFi on Dell Latitude D600

[Eric Belhomme]

Hi,

I know this post is not really in charter, but as there's not specific 
list for Linux on Dell laptops...

So I own a Dell D600 running Debian Etch and Ms Windows XP Pro (dual 
boot) There is a mini-PCI WiFi card (Dell Truemobile 1400) based on 
broadcom BCM4306. This chipset is not directly supported on Linux, but 
works fine with the ndiswrapper module.

The problem is if I launch Linux while the WiFi card was previously 
desactivated under Windows by pressing [Fn]=[F2], I can't use the WiFi 
card :
ndiswrapper goes up correctly but when I try to use it I get a message 
"receive_packet failed on wlan0: Network is down". Of course pressing 
[Fn]+[F2] keys seems to do nothing...
I have to reboot on Windows, reactivate the card by pressing [Fn]+[F2] 
again, and then rebbot on Linux...

So I'd like to know if there is a workaround to activate/desactivate the 
wifi card under Linux ?

Regards,

-- 
Rico