[Graymalkin]

I have tried drivers from both wireless.sourceforge.com and IOXperts for this card and have gotten them to work fine. My problem lies in getting the ethernet interface to work. The card will detect a wireless network and pick a signal up but refuses to grab DHCP information from the router. It simply does not see my network. I've tried enabling and disabling WEP and just about everything else I can think of.

[howardm4]

that is usually indicative of

SSID is wrong or,
WEP key is wrong (turn OFF WEP temporarily) or,
your WAP has MAC filtering turned on and you never added the WPC11 or,
the WAP isn't config'd to do 'bridging'

[Graymalkin]

The bridging was my problem. I set my WAP to be a bridge and plugged it into my old wired router to get out to the internet and now everything is working fine. I'm actually typing this on my Powerbook from the back room of the house sitting on a bed, this is a much desired freedom.

Here's some details about my experience. Both the WirelessDriver and IOXpert drivers detected my card but only the IOXpert driver works with 128-bit WEP encryption. Maybe in the future the WirelessDriver will as well but until then it is IOXperts for me. I paid the $14.95 for unlimited use of the driver, even with the $14.95 tacked on top of the card it is still cheaper than getting a natively compatible Wi-Fi card. The cheapest ones i've seen start at $90 which is a bit more than I'm willing to pay.

The WAP I'm using is a Microsoft MN-500 802.11b router. It has an integrated four port switch. Besides the wireless problems it worked perfectly as a router. It had all the same functionality as my Linksys router. I went with the MS router because it wascheaper than the Linksys WAP and I was out for a deal rather than have what someone deems is the best. When I have some time off work I'm going to experiment more with the router to see if I can get the router to bridge the wireless and wired connections.

I find it strange it wasn't doing that because the Powerbook was seeing the wireless network, I had the correct SSID and WEP key entered into the configuration. I was also able to plug my Powerbook directly into the router and have it fully functional on en0. When it was trying to use en1 (the Linksys card) to get DHCP information it would time out and self assign values. Even setting values manually didn't help me any.

If you're curious, the MN-500 router is administered just link a Linksys or Netgear router. You connect to it through a broser and do all the configuration that way. It comes with a small monitor utility for Windows XP which is entirely optional (like I said the wired connection worked fine with my Powerbook) and is really just a SNMP utility.

[ghporter]

The problem was apparently that the access point part of your router/access point wasn't talking to the router part. You may have had a great radio conversation going, but you weren't conversing with the part that assigns IP addresses and connects to the Internet. Some of these composite products can get a little complicated to manage, which is one reason I have a gateway router and a separate access point. (The other reason is that I didn't get interested in wireless networking for almost a year after I got into wired networking.)

[turiglia]

i have the mn-500 base station and am trying to connect with a powerbook g4 with airport card. no luck. the powerbook get a good signal to the station, but no internet. seems like the same problem you faced. any suggestions?