Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'Add 802.11g wireless networking to older PowerBooks' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Add 802.11g wireless networking to older PowerBooks
Authored by: zmagyar on Nov 22, '05 06:33:38AM

Well I just recently learned that indeed an PC 802.11g shows up as another airport card, and while this is a good news, it creates a bit of headache which so far I coudn't overcome. The problem is when you do have already an airport card built in. It seems that the system is confused which is which, you can't rename either the built in or the added one, they are both airport, period. And then you can't disable it either, because if you disable one, the other one disables too. You can overcome this by going to terminal with ifconfig but as soon as you open the network preferences the confusion starts again. You also can't easily configure them as the configuration overwrites when you try to configure the second instance of the airport...

The bottom line is, does anybody know how to rename the airport card? This might be a good start to solve this.

BTW I didn't try to remove the built in yet.

Thanks for hints,
Zsolt



[ Reply to This | # ]
Add 802.11g wireless networking to older PowerBooks
Authored by: Dahak on Nov 22, '05 06:42:23AM

I ran into the same problem with my Pismo and an MS Broadcom-based PC card for my Pismo. Ultimately, the only fix is to take out (or at least disconnect) either the built-in Airport card or to take out the PC card you just installed. I chose to disconnect my built-in Airport 802.11b card in favor of the the MS 802.11g PC card. I haven't had a problem since disconnecting the built-in card.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Add 802.11g wireless networking to older PowerBooks
Authored by: mpenix on Nov 22, '05 07:06:46AM

Here is a useful link to a table that has various adaptors along with an indication as to whether the 802.11g adaptor has the broadcom chipset or not:

http://home.earthlink.net/~metaphyzx/Wireless.htm

FWIW, I've been using an 802.11g Asante PC card in my Wallstreet for about 6 months under OS X 10.3 with no problems using the built in airport drivers. I selected the Asante when I saw them on closeout for $15 and found them compatible on the above web page. Couldn't be happier.

Mike



[ Reply to This | # ]
Add 802.11g wireless networking to older PowerBooks
Authored by: mindbooger on Nov 22, '05 07:51:29AM

I don't know about renaming it, but you can disable the internal Airport, either on-demand or internally, by either kextunloading or disabling the kernel extension for the plain old Airport. I was doing this for quite some time on my TiBook and a Broadcom Cardbus card.

On-demand: 'sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort.kext' (you can kextload it later to get it back)

Permanent: 'sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort.kext /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort.disabled; sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions'



[ Reply to This | # ]
Add 802.11g wireless networking to older PowerBooks
Authored by: zmagyar on Nov 23, '05 03:37:50AM

There are a few problems with this approach:
First of all I have to airpot kekxts in my Extensions folder, AppleAirPort, and AppleAirPort2..??
If I list the loaded kexts then I get two entries with Air:
129 1 0x2f0b8000 0x22000 0x21000 com.apple.driver.AppleAirPort (3.4.4) <31 11 2>
130 0 0x2e805000 0x12000 0x11000 com.apple.driver.AirPortFirmware (3.4.4) <129 11>
It is unclear who loads the second one.
Finally if I unload the AppleAirPort.kext then no matter what I do (ex insert my PC Card Wireless) the system says: no airport installed and does not let me configure the Airport port, neither it shows a new port for the inserted card....so for me this solution does not work.
I guess I will have to try to unplug the internal one and see what will happen.
Tx for efforts Zsolt



[ Reply to This | # ]
Add 802.11g wireless networking to older PowerBooks
Authored by: mindbooger on Nov 23, '05 10:14:01AM

FWIW, you need to unload the Airport driver _before_ you insert the PCCard. If you see them both loaded, it's too late.



[ Reply to This | # ]