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WHAT\'S THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM REQUIREMENT FOR WIRELESS ACCESS ON A MAC?
An older laptop and a cheap PCMCIA card. Ebooks and Newtons also have
PCMCIA WiFi [1] drivers available.
The minumum I've ever heard of being successful as a CLIENT node is a
Powerbook 540 [2], System 7.5.3, an Orinoco or co-branded PCMCIA card,
and the Orinoco drivers.
Note this 1994 laptop isn't even a PowerPC [3] (33 mHz 68LC040 CPU),
usually has dead batteries and not enough RAM, and is excruciatingly
slow. PCMCIA slots were optional. The 190 series [4] is of the same
era, and had slots as standard.
A more realistic minimum is the Powerbook 5300 [5], a 100 mHz PPC
machine with slots as standard, and still available for next to
nothing. It will also run versions of the MacOS [6] up to 9.1,
compared to the '040 machines which are stuck with 8.1 or lower.
Any of the more recent Powerbooks or iBooks [7] should be fine.
With Ethernet or Localtalk (printer cable) networking and the right
software, these machines can act as bridges to the rest of your fixed
network.
So to summarise:
HOST MACHINE:
One of:
* Laptop with a PCMCIA, Cardbus or internal Airport slot.
* Desktop with PCI slots, an Airport slot.
* Note many PCI and PCI Cradle solutions are not supported with G3
machines. See Apple [8] page.
* Any machine with USB or Ethernet using an external wireless
adapter/AP.
SUPPORTED WIRELESS ADAPTER OR AP
_(Note: Must have Mac driver software available, although some
rebranded cards can use drivers from their chipset cohorts, with
occasional hackage)_
One of:
* PCMCIA, Cardbus or Airport card
* PCI card
* PCI cradle with PCMCIA/Carbus card
* See note above about G3 issues
* USB wireless adapter or Ethernet to wireless bridge
* Free-standing base station, AP or router
OPERATING SYSTEM AND DRIVERS:
Officially, MacOS [9] 8.6 is the minimum for the Airport drivers.
This means a PPC machine, as 8.1 was the last release to run on 68k
hardware. There are Orinoco drivers available for System 7.5.3.
For a ROUTING node, you're probably looking at some Unix [10] flavour
or other [11], or MacOS [12] X. The minimum machine I've heard of
there is the 6360/Debian/Ricoh cradle/Orinoco Silver card system that
Zog [13] put together.
OS X capable G3 machines can be had on eBay for around $120-$150
desktop or twice that for a Powerbook or iBook. These machines also
have the great advantage of using standard PC RAM and IDE/ATA hard
drives, although some of the older machines like the 6360 can also use
IDE drives.
AIRPORT VS PCMCIA SLOTS
Airport cards, and the card in the Airport base station, are made by
Lucent/Agere for Apple, and are internally identical to their Orinoco
Silver cards.
Note however that you cannot use an Airport card in a PCMCIA slot,
nor vice versa, because the slots are physically different. Airport
drivers are _supposed_ to recognise Lucent Orinoco cards and their
re-branded clones (Enterasys, Cabletron), and vice versa, but one
member has reported a failure to recognise.
COMMENTS:
RyanM [14] I've installed an Avaya card into a 17" imac, worked
perfectly, apart from it being a struggle to plug the external antenna
socket.
OS X.2 recognised it as an airport card, and upgraded the firmware
automatically. It also works in a Powermac G4.
Further information and links on the Apple [15] page
Links:
------
[1] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?WiFi
[2] http://www.lowendmac.com/pb/540.shtml
[3] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?PowerPC
[4] http://www.lowendmac.com/pb/190.shtml
[5] http://www.lowendmac.com/pb2/5300.shtml
[6] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?MacOS
[7] http://www.lowendmac.com/powerbooks.html
[8] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?Apple
[9] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?MacOS
[10] http://www.eskimo.com/%7Epristine/unix.html
[11] http://web.espy.org/apple-flavored-unix/
[12] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?MacOS
[13] http://zog.net.au
[14] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?RyanM
[15] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?Apple
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