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c u rr y · Mar 26, 2001, 12:09 PM

Allright, here goes...I have a G4 400 I use as a Software Base Station, and a PowerBook G3 Lombard I connect with using a WaveLAN Gold PC Card,as there is no AirPort slot in these babies...I am running 9.0.4 on the G4 and have OS X and 9.1 on the PowerBook G3. I can get AirPort working when I boot into 9.1, but get the message "no AirPort card detected when I try it in OS X...How can I get OS X to recognize the PC Card, so I can use AirPort in OS X? Was there a solution to this in the Public Beta Forums? Someone, please be kind and let me in on what I can do...Thanks, ahead of time.

Oh yeah...I know that Apple's TIL claims there is no way it will work...but they have been wrong before !!

Scott_H · Mar 26, 2001, 12:15 PM

There's a thread or two in Support frum now that you may want to check out.

I'm going to move this over to the Mac OS X Usage & Support forum. Click through to find your post.

PowerBookDude · Mar 26, 2001, 01:30 PM

Originally posted by c u rr y:
Allright, here goes...I have a G4 400 I use as a Software Base Station, and a PowerBook G3 Lombard I connect with using a WaveLAN Gold PC Card,as there is no AirPort slot in these babies...I am running 9.0.4 on the G4 and have OS X and 9.1 on the PowerBook G3. I can get AirPort working when I boot into 9.1, but get the message "no AirPort card detected when I try it in OS X...How can I get OS X to recognize the PC Card, so I can use AirPort in OS X? Was there a solution to this in the Public Beta Forums? Someone, please be kind and let me in on what I can do...Thanks, ahead of time.

Oh yeah...I know that Apple's TIL claims there is no way it will work...but they have been wrong before !!

PC Cards (ie WaveLAN) don't work under OS X yet.

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Ti 500/384/20/Airport/OS X * Pismo 500/256/12/Airport * iMac DV SE 400/128/12/Airport
iBook Blueberry 300/96/3/Airport ** Epson 980 and 740i * SoundSticks * Visor Prism * Palm V [retired]

lgerbarg · Mar 26, 2001, 01:50 PM

Originally posted by PowerBookDude:
PC Cards (ie WaveLAN) don't work under OS X yet.

That's not quite true. Stick in a card, preferably a 16 bit card as a 32bit card may attempt a match against one of your PCI drivers, and that could cause a crash in some cases, like USB cards. Now look in the IORegistryExplorer (on the dev disk) or /usr/sbin/ioreg. The card will show up something like this:

Code:
  |   +-o uni-n@f8000000  &lt;class IOPlatformDevice&gt;
  |   +-o pci@f0000000  &lt;class IOPlatformDevice&gt;
  |   | +-o AppleMacRiscAGP  &lt;class AppleMacRiscAGP&gt;
...
  |   |   +-o cardbus@1A  &lt;class IOPCIDevice&gt;
  |   |     +-o IOPCCardBridge  &lt;class IOPCCardBridge&gt;

OS X does support Cardbus cards. They are actually from a logical standpoint slightly extended PCI. What that means is that it can attempt tio use a PCI driver, but a number of Apple's PCI drivers don;t know how to deal with insertion/removal (or to be more exact, the fact that the cards don;t have static memory locations).

16bit PCMCIA like the WaveLAN require custom drivers. I am not sure if any have actually been written, so there may be some bugs in the support code that make it difficult, but this not a given.

And you can even probe for a whole lot of info. I currently have a driver stub I can get to match against my Wavelan, I just can't quite get its memory windows set up, once I do I should be able to just graft the code Ben H. wrote for Airport onto it.

Louis

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Louis Gerbarg
Darwin Developer

Since EBCDIC · May 2, 2001, 04:58 PM

So, to answer the poster's question, the bottom line for end users (even reasonably sophisticated ones) is that the Lucent WaveLAN Orinico PCMCIA cards are not yet supported in any practical manner (nor are any other PC Cards).

Right?

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Since EBCDIC
Make every post count!

asxless · May 2, 2001, 06:05 PM

Louis,

Thanks for your post. It looks like there are some rays of hope from Darwin Developers like yourself. If you need a beta tester using an Orinoco Silver and/or Gold card in a TiBook, I'll be glad to give your drivers a good workout. BTW I have several AirPorts, for roaming tests. Two have been upgraded to "Gold standard" and can run 40 or 128bit encryption. I also have access to Lucent Access Points.

FWIW the lack of 128bit encryption support in OS X is a Show Stopper to my using OS X at the office. I am not going to cripple my TiBook into a "wired portable desktop" just to use OS X.

asxless in iLand

dogzilla · May 2, 2001, 07:21 PM

And as far as official support:

Wavelan/Orinoco/Agere/Lucent had originally said "It's Apple's responsibility to support it". Then they said "sometime April". They are now saying "sometime May". I'm concerned that right around May 29th, this will suddenly change to "sometime never".

It seems that open source drivers are our best hope.
(In my best Pricess Leia voice) "Help us Louis Gerbarg...You're our only hope!"

Xeo · May 2, 2001, 07:58 PM

I have the reverse situation. I have an AirPort card in a rev. A iBook and my college has a few WaveLAN base stations around. They work fine in OS 9. On the other hand, OS X can get an IP and strong signal, but when checking the status it says "Unavailable."

I found a stray AirPort base station (real one, Apple made) that was hooked up to a professors connection for his iBooks, and since he didn't password protect it I could use it. That worked fine in OS X.

I assume that OS X cannot use 3rd party 802.11 services yet. I am going to report feedback on this.

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Camelot · May 2, 2001, 08:27 PM

Originally posted by Xeo:

I assume that OS X cannot use 3rd party 802.11 services yet. I am going to report feedback on this.

Not so. My office is (un)wired with Lucent WaveLAN/Orinoco Access Points (not Apple Base Stations). All our machines, mix of PCs, Macs with Lucent cards, Macs with Apple Airport cards (including TiBooks), OS 9.x, and OS X connect fine without any problem at all.

My TiBook that I'm on right now is running OS X using an Apple Airport Card to a Lucent WaveLAN Access Point

I've always had a good signal, and the 'Status' has always been 'unavailable', both under OS X and 9.x. so that's nothing new and doesn't mean you don't have a connection.

Xeo · May 3, 2001, 12:07 AM

I've always had a good signal, and the 'Status' has always been 'unavailable', both under OS X and 9.x. so that's nothing new and doesn't mean you don't have a connection.

I'm glad you can use your network via these 3rd party products.

For me:
(using WaveLAN base stations) In OS 9, the status is "Connected" and I can use the internet and the LAN. In OS X, the status is "Unavailable" and I can't see the network, and I can't use the internet.

(using AirPort base station) In OS 9, the status is "Connected" and the internet/LAN works. In OS X, the status is "Connected" and the internet/LAN works.

I don't understand how I can get a valid IP and everything appears to be working, with a strong signal, yet I can't see the network or use the internet.

Why yours works, I don't know. So if it's something I can do on my end, I'd really like to fix it.

cteselle · Aug 13, 2001, 02:02 PM

Any status update on this yet? I have a pismo powerbook and a lucent card, and would like to connect to my airport network with OS X? anyone successful yet?

yuriwho · Aug 13, 2001, 02:20 PM

Open source drivers are available at http://homepage.mac.com/yuriwho

There is a long thread in the general discussion on them. (search for wavelan to find it)

Enjoy!