[Wirelessdriver-support] Re: PowerBook G4 15"/OS X 10.3.2/Proxim Orinoco Silver 802.11b/g (Barry Hawkins)

[Amanda W. <am...@al...>]

On Dec 20, 2003, at 11:14 PM, Barry Hawkins 
<ly...@al...> 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)