Granite's iBook G3 Clamshells

GraniteTheWolf · Sep 6, 2014

Bought one of these little guys:

Dedicated to wifi b/g 128 bit WEP encryption.
You can find these for so damn cheap. $15 got me this and a power cord for it. Just connect it to my modern router through Ethernet and its good! Very easy to set up too.

Also picked up a 128bit Airport card for the iBook Clamshell. I must say... its NICE not having to have the usb port used up to connect to wifi. A little faster then usb 1.1 wifi too.

EDIT: I have since changed my encryption to WPA, turns out the original airport card can do WPA as long as the OS is fully updated Panther or newer. If it could do WPA2 I wouldn't need this little router, but this will work just fine

Intell · Sep 6, 2014

Just be careful with the WEP network. They are so easy to crack it shouldn't even be an option on modern networking equipment. Only have the WEP Extreme turned on when you need it, unless you live away from other people that might be able to see it.

GraniteTheWolf · Sep 6, 2014

Intell said:
Just be careful with the WEP network. They are so easy to crack it shouldn't even be an option on modern networking equipment. Only have the WEP Extreme turned on when you need it, unless you live away from other people that might be able to see it.

Is it possible to make it a hidden network so you need to know the name of it before you can even enter a password? I imagine thats the next best thing.

Altemose · Sep 6, 2014

GraniteTheWolf said:
Is it possible to make it a hidden network so you need to know the name of it before you can even enter a password? I imagine thats the next best thing.

Hidden networks are a bit like having a mailbox with a plastic bag over it. Most wont see your address but it isn't hard to find it either. It can also raise some issues on some clients.

Intell · Sep 6, 2014

Altemose is right, turning off the SSID doesn't make it any harder to break in to. Neither does using MAC address filtering. The best solution for a WEP network would be to use a RADIUS server, but that won't work with older systems.

GraniteTheWolf · Sep 6, 2014

Altemose said:
Hidden networks are a bit like having a mailbox with a plastic bag over it. Most wont see your address but it isn't hard to find it either. It can also raise some issues on some clients.

Ah, so it wouldn't change much.

I'm in a very small town, in fact someone close enough to me is broadcasting a fully unencrypted signal with the genius name of "**** OFF" as its SSID. Ive connected to it before and its got full internet access and everything lol.

If I were in a bigger city or somewhere else I might worry, but I'm honestly not concerned. A 128 bit WEP password is all I'll need to keep unwanted people off the network.

As for my primary router its running the latest WPA2 mixed encryption.

Altemose · Sep 6, 2014

GraniteTheWolf said:
Ah, so it wouldn't change much.

I'm in a very small town, in fact someone close enough to me is broadcasting a fully unencrypted signal with the genius name of "**** OFF" as its SSID. Ive connected to it before and its got full internet access and everything lol.

If I were in a bigger city or somewhere else I might worry, but I'm honestly not concerned. A 128 bit WEP password is all I'll need to keep unwanted people off the network.

As for my primary router its running the latest WPA2 mixed encryption.

Besides... what are you really doing on a PPC Mac that is so confidential? Going on MacRumors? No one is out there to steal the log on.

Intell · Sep 6, 2014

Altemose said:
Besides... what are you really doing on a PPC Mac that is so confidential? Going on MacRumors? No one is out there to steal the log on.

If someone can get onto the WEP network, they can see everything that happens on his internal network unless he isolates if with a VLAN.

Altemose · Sep 6, 2014

Intell said:
If someone can get onto the WEP network, they can see everything that happens on his internal network unless he isolates if with a VLAN.

True. I would believe that if it was ran directly off the modem (provided it has multiple LAN ports) he would be fine with just basic internet traffic being able to be seen if there was a dirtbag on his network.

GraniteTheWolf · Sep 6, 2014

Intell said:
If someone can get onto the WEP network, they can see everything that happens on his internal network unless he isolates if with a VLAN.

I just changed the security to WPA. Turns out the original airport card in my clamshell can do WPA (just not wpa2)

I'm sure plain WPA is much more secure then WEP.

My setup is my modem feeding my modern wifi router which has 4 Ethernet ports on the back, one of those ports feeds to the airport router.

Altemose · Sep 6, 2014

GraniteTheWolf said:
I just changed the security to WPA. Turns out the original airport card in my clamshell can do WPA (just not wpa2)

I'm sure plain WPA is much more secure then WEP.

My setup is my modem feeding my modern wifi router which has 4 Ethernet ports on the back, one of those ports feeds to the airport router.

Essentially the AirPort is just being an AP then.

Intell · Sep 6, 2014

The original Airport card can do WPA, but only in 10.3.9 or higher.

Altemose said:
True. I would believe that if it was ran directly off the modem (provided it has multiple LAN ports) he would be fine with just basic internet traffic being able to be seen if there was a dirtbag on his network.

Most consumer modems that have multiple LAN ports are also a router and because of this the WEP network would be seen and accessible from the internal network and vise-versa. Unless he has DD-WRT on his modem/router or a enterprise grade modem/router, he won't be able to establish a VLAN just for the WEP network.

GraniteTheWolf · Sep 6, 2014

I run Tiger on my iBook so I am in the clear for WPA.

Glad you guys made me think to check all the encryption options my old airport extreme can do. Looks like plain WPA is the newest, should be much more secure then any form of WEP.

Plenty good enough for me.

Altemose · Sep 6, 2014

Intell said:
Most consumer modems that have multiple LAN ports are also a router and because of this the WEP network would be seen and accessible from the internal network and vise-versa. Unless he has DD-WRT on his modem/router or a enterprise grade modem/router, he won't be able to establish a VLAN just for the WEP network.

We do have a Netgear residential gateway at school set to bridge mode to use just as a modem that has four ports. That is the only reason why I said that. Granite could also have a switch behind a modem like my SurfBoard SB6121 that supports up to 64 devices connected through a switch but isn't a router.

Intell · Sep 6, 2014

Altemose said:
We do have a Netgear residential gateway at school set to bridge mode to use just as a modem that has four ports. That is the only reason why I said that. Granite could also have a switch behind a modem like my SurfBoard SB6121 that supports up to 64 devices connected through a switch but isn't a router.

It would still switch the packets between the various LAN ports without any soft partition or VLAN. That would be a large security risk if a portion of the network was broadcasting in WEP.

Altemose · Sep 6, 2014

Intell said:
It would still switch the packets between the various LAN ports without any soft partition or VLAN. That would be a large security risk if a portion of the network was broadcasting in WEP.

The Netgear gateway supports VLAN but I agree with what you are saying and not everybody's equipment has that capability.

sabuga · Sep 6, 2014

I've got a 466MHz lime green iBook. I've used a 16GB compact flash card with a CF-IDE converter as an HDD. Makes it totally silent, and a bit quicker. It's still rather slow (I'm running Tiger), but it makes a good MP3 computer.

CYB3RBYTE · Sep 16, 2014

Both of the clamshell iBooks that I had owned died due to logic board issues. One was a 366 Graphite, and the other was a 466 SE Graphite. I wish I could have saved these machines.

weckart · Sep 16, 2014

CYB3RBYTE said:
Both of the clamshell iBooks that I had owned died due to logic board issues.

How did you kill them? Even when gaming on my 466 it doesn't seem to get very hot. Might be the thick plastic hull. Even so, I don't detect much heat by the vents.

Jkj12 · Sep 20, 2014

How is normal web browsing on it? YouTube videos etc.?

Altemose · Sep 20, 2014

Jkj12 said:
How is normal web browsing on it? YouTube videos etc.?

You would be much better served by a G4 in that scenario.

GraniteTheWolf · Sep 20, 2014

Jkj12 said:
How is normal web browsing on it? YouTube videos etc.?

Normal web browsing is fairly crippled. Youtube or any other website heavy in flash content is out of the question.

All its good for is instant messaging clients, listening to music, playing older games, and browsing around websites like Macrumers, with no flash content.

I use Camino on mine and have it set to turn off flash content. While it does work it still messes with the layout of the sites sometimes. Also keep in mind I have a faster & newer hard drive in mine. I also have the ram maxed out too.

Does it all work? Yes. Is it good at it? Not any more!

weckart · Sep 20, 2014

Jkj12 said:
How is normal web browsing on it? YouTube videos etc.?

If you install Tiger then you can use TenFourFox and browsing is fine on most websites, except that the default resolution of 800x600 is a bit of a pain when most websites are designed with XGA in mind.

Youtube etc. Forget it. You can get sound and a slideshow at best.

I am considering the XGA mod, which is to replace the display with one from an iBook to get a default resolution of 1024x768. This is only possible on Clamshells with Firewire as the early Clamshells do not have enough VRAM to power displays at that resolution.

Jkj12 · Sep 20, 2014

weckart said:
I am considering the XGA mod, which is to replace the display with one from an iBook to get a default resolution of 1024x768. This is only possible on Clamshells with Firewire as the early Clamshells do not have enough VRAM to power displays at that resolution.

Yeah from the iBook g3 snow. That's a pretty cool mod.

Is e.g. overclocking possible on these machines?

weckart · Sep 21, 2014

Jkj12 said:
Yeah from the iBook g3 snow. That's a pretty cool mod.

Is e.g. overclocking possible on these machines?

These machines are fanless and with an SSD completely silent apart from the optical drive. Anything that increases internal heat build up sounds like a bad idea to me.

Having said that, speeds range from 300Mhz to 466Mhz. If the chips are the same and speeds only reflect the clock speed each can run at without falling over then I assume overclocking a 300Mhz up a notch or two might be possible without too many crashes. Others might help you on that as I have never overclocked a PPC machine before.

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