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shifuimam · Jul 1, 2009, 09:12 AM

I have an original Airport card on a 128-bit WEP-encrypted wireless network. My key works, and it finds the access point, but it refuses to get an IP address. I ended up having to manually configure the Airport card with an IP in the router's range.

Anyone know why this might be happening? How can I force Airport to get an IP from DHCP?

Andy8 · Jul 2, 2009, 02:31 AM

Does it work if you turn off the encryption?

ghporter · Jul 2, 2009, 07:41 AM

It should work with DHCP, but ONLY if you have properly authenticated to get WEP working. And remember, WEP is poo, so not only is it getting in your way, it's not protecting the network. If it's your network, take the small amount of time needed and upgrade to WPA. But your problem is almost certainly because of WEP.

shifuimam · Jul 5, 2009, 01:03 PM

I didn't try turning off WEP (I have a secondary AP with WEP so that we can put our DSLites on the Internet - stupid Nintendo). However, I finally realized that OS 9 is total crap, so I tried Ubuntu instead.

Big Mac · Jul 5, 2009, 01:21 PM

It took you that long to figure out that OS 9 is crap?

shifuimam · Jul 5, 2009, 07:33 PM

I used it for a grand total of, like, three days. I was amazed at just how bad it really was.

My favorite part was how a single application hanging caused the entire OS to become completely unresponsive.

Big Mac · Jul 5, 2009, 09:40 PM

Being a clamshell iBook enthusiast, I thought you had OS 9 experience. The deficiencies of the classic Mac OS are pretty well known - that why Apple needed a next generation OS to replace it.

turtle777 · Jul 6, 2009, 03:52 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

if it's your network, take the small amount of time needed and upgrade to WPA. But your problem is almost certainly because of WEP.

The original airport card doesn't support WPA.

-t

Big Mac · Jul 6, 2009, 06:11 AM

That's what I thought, turtle, but shifuimam claims otherwise.

shifuimam · Jul 6, 2009, 06:15 AM

Originally Posted by turtle777

The original airport card doesn't support WPA.

-t

Wrong. The original Airport card DOES support WPA, unless OS X is lying to me and using a magic, invisible wifi network to connect me to both my LAN and the Internet.

I don't recall off the top of my head if WPA was working in Panther back when I was using it, but I'm 1,000% certain it works in Tiger.

Edit:

Apple says Panther supports WPA with an original Airport card. Snap.

shifuimam · Jul 6, 2009, 06:19 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Being a clamshell iBook enthusiast, I thought you had OS 9 experience. The deficiencies of the classic Mac OS are pretty well known - that why Apple needed a next generation OS to replace it.

Nope. The iBook I got on eBay had some version of OS X on it. I've briefly seen OS 8.6 and 9.2.2, but hadn't tried to actually use either one for anything legitimate. After about three days on it, I wanted to either bash my head through a wall or throw my iBook in front of the next semi passing by my house.

turtle777 · Jul 6, 2009, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

Wrong. The original Airport card DOES support WPA, unless OS X is lying to me and using a magic, invisible wifi network to connect me to both my LAN and the Internet.

I don't recall off the top of my head if WPA was working in Panther back when I was using it, but I'm 1,000% certain it works in Tiger.

Edit:

Apple says Panther supports WPA with an original Airport card. Snap.

I don't care what Apple says, my iBook (Dual USB) never supported WPA, and I used OS 10.0 - 10.4 on it.
I can't say for sure if OS 9 supported it.

-t

shifuimam · Jul 6, 2009, 03:13 PM

Originally Posted by turtle777

I don't care what Apple says, my iBook (Dual USB) never supported WPA, and I used OS 10.0 - 10.4 on it.
I can't say for sure if OS 9 supported it.

-t

OS 9 definitely has no WPA support, software or otherwise.

I'm wondering if something went awry with the firmware upgrade on the card itself when you installed the latest Airport software in OS X. The hardware definitely supports WPA. Airport cards are repackaged Lucent WaveLAN Silver cards - which can also be upgraded to support WPA through a firmware update (which essentially converts it into a WaveLAN Gold).

turtle777 · Jul 6, 2009, 03:25 PM

Originally Posted by shifuimam

I'm wondering if something went awry with the firmware upgrade on the card itself when you installed the latest Airport software in OS X. The hardware definitely supports WPA. Airport cards are repackaged Lucent WaveLAN Silver cards - which can also be upgraded to support WPA through a firmware update (which essentially converts it into a WaveLAN Gold).

I dunno. I can't check, because my iBook's antenna gave up. So I have a good airport card that is not usable.

-t