[Wirelessdriver-devel] Guide to Prism 2/2.5 cards with KisMac and Wireless Driver

SourceForge Headquarters 1320 Columbia Street Suite 310 San Diego, CA 92101 +1 (858) 422-6466

I am posting my first draft here in the forums for peer review before 
posting on the KisMac wiki. I am crossposting with two groups for the 
SourceForge driver as well. If you have anything to add or correct, please 
let me know. Text inside of brackets [] is not really part of the Guide, but 
a solicitation for more information.

Introduction:

A high output, high senstitivity 802.11b card with external antenna jacks is 
an excellent choice for scanning for networks with tools such as KisMac as 
well as connecting to networks. There are several such cards using versions 
of the PRISM chip set. This guide summarizes the installation procedures and 
functionality that you are likely to achieve with various versions of OS X.

I prefer the PRISM 2 chipset over the newer PRISM GT chipset for 802.11g 
cards, because there are no high output high senstivity PRISM GT 802.11g 
cards with a external antenna connector that I could find. [If you are aware 
of such a PRISM GT card, please let me know.]

Note: I did not test WEP because support varies within PRISM cards. You may 
be limited to connecting to open networks. These procedures were tested on 
an open network.

I hope to see further development/debugging of the SourceForge Wireless 
Driver to fix the flakiness, and make WEP and Mac address configuration work 
more consistently.

Jaguar (10.2.8)

Functionality achieved: You should find that you are able to connect to 
networks with your card, scan with Kismac, and change Mac Addresses with 
WirelessMac. Be sure to reboot after you scan before connecting to a network 
because Kismac is flakey about unloading the driver. Also I would recommend 
a reboot after changing the Mac address before connecting to a network with 
a custom Mac address and maybe another reboot after configuring the Network 
control panel to use what the operating system perceives as a "new" adapter.

1) Install version 1.0.0 b5 of the SourceForge Wireless Driver according to 
the instructions.
2) Insert your wireless card and determine the IOName of your card using the 
command

/usr/sbin/ioreg -l | grep pccard

3) In the terminal issue the su command to become the root user and then cd 
into /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext/Contents.

4) Edit the info.plist file (with pico) and look for the following section.

                <key>everything else</key>
                <dict>
                        <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
                        <string>org.noncontiguous.WirelessDriver</string>
                        <key>IOClass</key>
                        <string>org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver</string>
                        <key>IONameMatch</key>
                        <array>
                                <string>pccard156,2</string>
                                <string>pccard1eb,807</string>
                                <string>pccard274,1613</string>
                                <string>pccard274,1612</string>
                                <string>pccard138,2</string>

If your card is not already present, follow the pattern to add it at the 
bottom of the list.

5) Save the file and SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER FOR A COLD BOOT. You can leave 
the card inserted through the remainder of these steps. (The Wireless driver 
is a little flakey and may not recognize the card right away, even with a 
warm boot, so a cold boot should get it working with your card.)

6) Restart your computer, and verify the card is recognized by issuing the 
following command in Terminal

ifconfig

You should see a new ethernet adaptor listed, such as en2 or en3. If you are 
not in the vicinity of an open wireless network, move your computer to one 
to test that you connect. You should then be able to setup the network name 
to connect to and the Network settings in the system Preferences. If you 
can't connect, do an extra restart after setting up your settings, or change 
the location to something else and back (its a little flakey).

7) Install KisMac KisMAC012a per the instructions and choose to install the 
Wireless Driver Patch.

[Group, what is the latest version of KisMac that can run in Jaguar? I 
guessed this is the latest one for Jaguar, but correct me if I am wrong.]

When finished using your wireless card, shutdown before removing it, as the 
OS is not too keen on removal of the card and you may have system crashes. 
Power Off card in the menu bar does not work - it just comes right back, so 
shut down to remove the card.

Panther (10.3.9)

I tried version 1.0.0 b5 of the SourceForge Wireless Driver and it is 
completely nonfunctional in 10.3.9. I think Apple did something in this last 
release of Panther to break it and I saw such speculation in the forums.

Panther (10.3.3)

Functionality achieved: Mac OS X Panther is really not a good operating 
system for Prism 2 based wireless cards and KisMac. My recommendation if you 
want to use KisMac with theSourceForge driver and a high sensitivity card is 
to go back to Jaguar, or forward to Tiger.

Follow steps 1 - 6 above for general use of your Wireless Card. KisMac 0.12a 
kernal panicked when I tried to scan months ago and I heard similar results 
from at least one other person in posts. I don't know about other versions 
(not having time to reformat my Panther drive to take it back level to 
10.3.3 after trying 10.3.9 in order to try R62).

Tiger (10.4.2)

Functionality achieved: You should be able to connect to Wireless networks 
and use KisMac. WirelessMac sets the Mac address inside of info.plist but 
the Wireless driver will not pick it up and will not use it, apparently not 
even with the modrak patch.
1) Install version Beta 6 of the SourceForge Wireless Driver according to 
the instructions.
2) Insert your wireless card and determine the IOName of your card using the 
command

/usr/sbin/ioreg -l | grep pccard

3) In the terminal issue the su command to become the root user and then cd 
into /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext/Contents.

4) Edit the info.plist file and look for the following section.

                <key>everything else</key>
                <dict>
                        <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
                        <string>org.noncontiguous.WirelessDriver</string>
                        <key>IOClass</key>
                        <string>org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver</string>
                        <key>IOMACAddress</key>
                        <string>00:11:22:33:44:55</string>
                        <key>IONameMatch</key>
                        <array>
                                <string>pccard156,2</string>
                                <string>pccard1eb,807</string>
                                <string>pccard274,1613</string>
                                <string>pccard274,1612</string>
                                <string>pccard138,2</string>

If your card is not already present, follow the pattern to add it at the 
bottom of the list.

5) Save the file and SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER FOR A COLD BOOT. You can leave 
the card inserted through the remainder of these steps. (The Wireless driver 
is a little flakey and may not recognize the card right away, even with a 
warm boot, so a cold boot should get it working with your card.)

6) Restart your computer, and verify the card is recognized by issuing the 
folling command in Terminal

ifconfig

You should see a new ethernet adaptor listed, such as en2 or en3. If you are 
not in the vicinity of an open wireless network, move your computer to one 
to test that you connect. You should then be able to setup the network name 
to connect to and the Network settings in the system Preferences. If you 
can't connect, do an extra restart after setting up your settings, or change 
the location to something else and back (its a little flakey).

7) Install KisMac R63 or later per the instructions and choose to install 
the Wireless Driver Patch. I used KisMac R67, the latest one with a prebuilt 
installer.

8) Install modrak patch to wireless driver to enable operation with KisMac. 
(This was also advertised as allowing changing of Mac address of the PRISM 
based card.) The next few steps come from

http://www.netstumbler.org/archive/index.php/t-15852.html
and
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1219280&group_id=34453&atid=411312

9) Download http://3web.dkm.cz/modrak/WirelessDriver.kext.zip

[Note: The source for the modrak patch has not been posted or shared to my 
knowlege. I am hoping that someone comes forward with it so it can be merged 
into the CVS along with the susumu fix of July. I did not install the Susumu 
fix, as I chose the modrak patch instead.]

10) Unpack the kext to /System/Library/Extensions/ -- you'll need to 
authenticate..
11) In Terminal, execute the following commands
su
(enter root password)
chown -R root /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext
chgrp -R wheel /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext

Also, you will need to reinsert your card's IOName in the info.plist file if 
you had to do it above.  Do so at this time.

12) PERFORM A COLD BOOT.