Re: [Wirelessdriver-support] ?s {Airport Ready? Senao Cards? Driver?}

[Rob M. <ro...@ma...>]

1) The Airport cards are modified version of the Lucent WaveLAN OEM 
card.  They are modified so that they won't work in a PCCard slot and 
thus aren't able to be used in PCs.  The WaveLAN chipset is identical 
to the PRISM2 chipset from Intersil except that it runs different 
firmware and may have different components supporting it.

1.) No idea.  The command set is mostly compatible.  I don't know how 
sensitive their driver is to the differences.

2) Probably not without some modifications.  I suspect you could get it 
to work, but you'd have to modify the driver and then remove Apple's 
Airport card driver as it will try to match as well (or make the 
matching number higher so ours matches first)

3) 'dub' is not the words I used or would have used.  The 
IOPCCardFamily driver package from Apple has specific constants in it 
for matching the various PowerBook motherboards and their PCCard 
adapter chips and to position the memory windows accordingly.  You will 
have to figure out an appropriate window to use and to add another 
machine target (not the official terminology, I'm sure, but it kinda 
fits) with that window information...  If you recompile IOPCCardFamily 
in debug mode, it includes another matching for debugging that might 
work, but I haven't tried it.

Many reports have it that if you put a silver card into the Airport 
slot, Apple's drivers will convert it to a gold card by upgrading the 
firmware.  I can't confirm this happens at all times, but it might help 
sway your decision.

-Rob


On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 10:42 Canada/Pacific, Eric Lundberg wrote:

> Well with more futzing around I have produced more questions that me
> tooling around on the internet didn't help me answer.
>
> So since the PCI->PCMCIA bridge I was borrowing wasn't recognized, I
> needed some other options.  I thought "Hmm presumbably the 'Airport
> Ready' nature of the motherboard means their must be pci-pcmcia bridge
> chip on the motherboard that is recognized, maybe I can find that and
> go by a bridge that uses it." so I went looking around.  Didn't find
> the chip, but I did notice that I could just stick the rebadged silver
> card I had into the airport connector.  Which is probably only
> possible since my computer is raw parts in a rubbermaid container
> (I.e., I have lots of space, no special 90 degree connectors required)
> After a quick reboot my mac thought it had an Airport card in it.  The
> little airport menu thing worked, I could join my local network,
> macstumber worked, etc.  Certainly much better signal strength and
> range than the crappy USB Belkin I was using.
>
> So, the trick is this: I don't want to use the silver card I have now,
> I want to use a Senao 200mw Ext2 card so that I can get enough power
> to get to my buddies signal (and net connection) at his place.  Which
> leads to the question of "If I plug in the Senao will the os just
> pretend it is an airport and let me use it."  Which I imagine is
> entirely up to the chipset and if it is the same type of chipset that
> is in the airport.
>
> Since I couldn't figure that out (no net connection at home), I
> thought I would try and see if I could get the silver working with the
> WirelessDriver (since I know it supports the Senao and the silver and
> if I can get it working on one, then it should be fine for the other)
> I moved the airport drivers out of the way and put the WirelessDriver
> in and rebooted.  No love.  No messages in the dmesg output, the
> troubleshooting script seems to think things are ok, except that the
> wireless card section is just blank.  For kicks I gave the IOExperts
> driver a try, and same thing, it just doesn't think I have a card
> inserted.
>
>
> 1) What chipset is the airport client card?
>
> 1a) Does anyone know if the airport driver will run the Senao card?
>
> 2) Will the wireless driver work with cards in the airport slot on G4
> airport ready machines?
>
> 3) A previous post mentioned that I might be able to get my
> PCI->PCMCIA bridge 'working' in some fashion if I enabled 'dubbing' in
> the driver when recompling.  I didn't find the word 'dub' in any
> project or framework file, so if someone could elaborate that would be
> great.
>
> 4) If you have any suggestions for gettin a Senao Ext2 working in a
> gigabit g4 'airport ready' machine, I would love to hear them.  I
> would like to get all this working over the weekend.  Thanks.
>
> -eric
>
>
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