Caution when choosing PCMCIA wireless cards (was Re: 17 inch powerbook 1.33Ghz problems)
On Dec 23, 2003, at 6:52 AM, Ryan Verner wrote:
On 23/12/2003, at 9:49 PM, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
On mar, 2003-12-23 at 10:51, Sven Luther wrote:
* Airport Extreme: forget it ;-)
Can one of the older non Extreme airport card be used in one of the
newer ibook/powerbooks ?
AFAIK, Airport Extreme aren't like older Airport cards thus they are
not
physically compatible.
But a standard PCCard Wifi card should work in the PCCard slot on the
PowerBook.
Nod, I can confirm both these statements. The Airport/Airport Extreme
cards are entirely new cards - different design, different chipset,
different connector, everything.
Get yourself a cheap Orinoco or Prism based card; both have excellent
support under Linux.
R
List,
Several words of caution when it comes to picking out a PCMCIA 802.11
card for your PowerBook.
1.) Not all Orinoco cards are equal. I just found this out the hard
way when I bought an Orinoco Silver 802.11b/g card after hearing that
an Orinoco Silver card should work fine for Mac OS and Linux. If you
are looking to buy one of those, be sure to buy the "Classic" Orinoco
802.11b card. The classic models are based on the HERMES 1.0 chipset
that so many of the drivers out there work with. The newer cards have
an unknown chipset, although some driver developers suspect it's a
chipset from either Atheros or Broadcom (yes, the ones who make the
mini-PCI AirPort Extreme card). For more info, check out the messages
I have attached below from Amanda Walker (author of the IOXperts driver
http://www.ioxperts.com/) on the mailing list for the WirelessDriver
project (http://wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net/).
2.) Check around before you buy a card to make sure it is going to work
for you. Don't go solely on hearsay. If you don't have an R&D fund to
buy cards that end up being useless, this is important. I paid
expedited freight for a Proxim card that is useless to me. Now I have
a used Cisco Aironet 350 802.11b card also on its way to me. The
Lindows site has a page that lists cards known to work well with Linux,
but I cannot find the link right now.
3.) 802.11g on PowerPC Linux is still apparently not for the faint of
heart. Consider yourself warned. See the earlier thread "Re:
Recommended Orinoco PCMCIA card?" at
(http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2003/debian-powerpc-200312/
msg00521.html).
Regards,
--
Barry C. Hawkins
All Things Computed
site: www.allthingscomputed.com
weblog: www.yepthatsme.com
MESSAGE 1:
From: amanda@alfar.com
Subject: [Wirelessdriver-support] Re: PowerBook G4 15"/OS X
10.3.2/Proxim Orinoco Silver 802.11b/g (Barry Hawkins)
Date: December 21, 2003 5:17:55 PM EST
To: wirelessdriver-support@lists.sourceforge.net
On Dec 20, 2003, at 11:14 PM, Barry Hawkins
<ly5t5@allthingscomputed.com> wrote:
This may be a quick question that confirms my fears. Is the Proxim
Orinoco 802.11b/g card able to work with this driver in a 15" PowerBook
G4 with no AirPort Extreme card installed running Panther (OS X
10.3.2)? I had hoped/gambled on the unit using its 802.11b as a
fallback if the 802.11g didn't work, but neither this driver nor the
IOXperts driver recognizes the presence of the card.
The Orinoco combo cards are based on an Atheros chipset, not the
Lucent/Agere/Intersil/whoever-owns-them-now chip set that the
WirelessDriver and IOXperts driver support. The b/g and a/b/g chipsets
are completely different, and would require a new driver written
completely from scratch.
Because of the nature of the Broadcom and Atheros chipsets, it's highly
unlikely that there will ever be a completely open source driver for
them, though Sam Leffler has done a good job striking a deal with
Atheros for his Linux and FreeBSD drivers (the module that talks to the
hardware is distributed in binary only). The big issue is that much,
much more of the radio operation is exposed to the host, which makes
the FCC very concerned about who should be able to twiddle the virtual
knobs. Operating at frequencies and power levels that you're not
licensed for is a big no-no, especially since some of the allowable
bands are surrounded by military-use bands :-).
Amanda Walker
(author of the IOXperts driver)
MESSAGE 2:
From: amanda@alfar.com
Subject: Re: [Wirelessdriver-support] Re: PowerBook G4 15"/OS X
10.3.2/Proxim Orinoco Silver 802.11b/g (Barry Hawkins)
Date: December 22, 2003 3:07:19 AM EST
To: ly5t5@allthingscomputed.com
Cc: wirelessdriver-support@lists.sourceforge.net
On Dec 21, 2003, at 11:14 PM, Barry Hawkins wrote:
Thanks so much for responding. I regretfully assumed that all Proxim
Orinoco Silver cards used the same chipset, and I now own one of these
relatively-useless items. It's ironic that I bought it trying to get
away from the Broadcom chipsets on AirPort Extreme cards 8^).
There are actually 3 "Orinoco Silver" cards that I know of:
- "Classic" version -- HERMES 1.0 controller -- basically the old
WaveLAN Silver card, very widely supported.
- 8421-WD (gold version is 8420-WD) -- Uses a HERMES 2.0 controller.
Not widely supported, but could be supported by current drivers if they
implement firmware download and find a way to get & use an Agere
firmware image legally. Otherwise fairly similar to HERMES 1.0 from
the driver's perspective.
- a/b, a/b/g combo cards: Atheros AR5000 chipset. Needs completely new
driver, but has a very good radio.
- b/g combo card: unknown chipset (could be either Atheros or Broadcom,
my guess is Atheros). Possibly an Agere HERMES 2.0 if Agere has
actually started shipping a g version (they weren't last I knew).
Is there a best-bet PCMCIA card you could recommend that uses the
Lucent/Agere/Intersil/Corporate-entity-du-jour?
Not really. Proxim is still selling the HERMES 1.0 cards as "Orinoco
Classic", but they are b only. They do work nicely with everyone's
driver, though.
Also, has the Broadcom and Atheros regime taken over with the
802.11g range of products?
Pretty much. Atheros and Broadcom have almost all of the 802.11a and
802.11g market between them. Intersil's PRISM GT & PRISM Duette aren't
very popular so far, and are yet another chipset design. Agere hasn't
shipped a g-capable version of the HERMES yet, as far as I know. It's
quite a mess being a driver developer right now :-).
Amanda Walker
--
Barry C. Hawkins
All Things Computed
site: www.allthingscomputed.com
weblog: www.yepthatsme.com
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