I know I can get a PCI card online that will work as a AirPort Extreme. My question is are there any USB Wireless adaptors that will work with OS X as a AirPort Extreme card?
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USB Wireless "AirPort Extreme"
- Thread starter MatthewLTL
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There's a Belkin card that works perfectly. I have one that I transfer around my various pre-Airport Extreme Powerbooks.
There's a seller on Ebay who sells them for about $10 as "Airport Extreme Compatible" without being explicit about who makes them...the one I have is Belkin branded card. I'll have to check on the p/n.
A few. I have a Belkin and Motorola Cardbus cards that work as AE plus an Orinoco that works as Airport 802.11b. There is a Buffalo Carbus card that will give 802.11n (full 300Mb/s) if you can put together the right drivers. It goes for about $60-$80 on eBay so only for the determined.
Plenty. OSX86project.org is your best bet for details. It has a database of compatible hardware for hackintoshes so just search under Tiger and Leopard.
from my experience nothing hackintosh wise will work on REAL apple computers OR PowerPC Macs
You seem to have forgotten that Leopard and latterly also Tiger to some extent had universal binaries including networking kexts.
As you were.
I don't know why anyone would want to if I'm honest. Brilliant game changing bit of kit in 1998, but a strange design by modern standards. Even Creative Labs drivers were flaky, and they don't work reliably with anything past Windows 2000 in my experience. I've still got mine in the old bits box. Dunno why really...
Why anyone would want to try and write their own SBLive drivers for OS X baffles me, there are much better alternatives.
Why anyone would want to try and write their own SBLive drivers for OS X baffles me, there are much better alternatives.
I have 3 SoundBlaster Audigy SE's Good for PCs but strangely PowerMac's have superior sound compared to a Windows PC
I chucked out a fully boxed Soundblaster AWE64 with all the cables and disks to clear some space. I even got that to run on OS/2 back in the day with a bit of tinkering. Gorgeous sound compared with built in/standard sound cards then. Given what old hardware parts fetch these days I am kicking myself a bit.
What was this thread about again?
If you still have this, what was the part number and firmware version? There is a Belkin 802.11n cardbus card model F5D8013, in revisions 1.0, 3.0, and 4.0, but their web site only specifies drivers for Windows-based hardware.
if your looking specifically for an 802.11N cardbus card for OS X then see the following link bellow, I believe Bunnspecial only ever used the much more well known/common 802.11g cards (not many people know that you can actually get native 802.11n on PPC)
https://www.journaldulapin.com/2016/02/08/une-carte-wi-fi-802-11n-dans-un-powerbook/
https://www.journaldulapin.com/2016/02/08/une-carte-wi-fi-802-11n-dans-un-powerbook/
Wasn't this a fee-based add-on available solely to early Intel-based Macs?
Was the update ever released publicly without fee after a certain date?
Admittedly I'll be squeaky wheel about this:
Have there been successful attempts to transfer the wifi/bt assembly from, say, an early MacBook or MacBook Pro, with the Broadcom chipset which can accommodate 802.11a/b/g/n, into a PowerBook/iBook? I spent some effort last evening reviewing the above link (and associated blog pieces). Initially, I misunderstood your reply, and spent time getting to know about Broadcom chipsets with adjacent model numbers but each presenting very different characteristics (e.g., the BCM4318 is 2.4GHz 802.11b/g only, while the BCM4328 is 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4/5GHz capable)
What it sounds like they're saying in the above blog is certain CardBus add-ons made with Broadcom chipsets allows the Apple hardware to recognize as "first-party" (i.e., using Airport interface), rather than third-party (i.e., using generic config interface) — as opposed to, say, late-2005 PPC Macs having a chipset with 802.11n as a latent draft feature which was never activated.
Which brings me back to the question of interoperability (and firmware compatibility) of transplanting the wifi/bt chipset from an early Intel Mac into a late PPC Mac, as neither featured the user-installable optional/add-on card we all know quite well. Has this path been explored in earnest, and if so, what were the barriers?
if you play your cards right (literally LOL)
you can install a 802.11n mini PCIe wifi card into a PCIe G5 but thats about it for wifi cards from intel macs, since no PowerBook implements PCIe in any way shape or form
for Bluetooth cards you can use the BT2.0 cards from early intel Macs in PowerMacs all the way back to FW800 MDDs, but I dont know what the BT card situation is like in PBs
indeed you dont need an official Airport card to use the official airport drivers and native OS X utilities, you just need a card that uses a compatible chipset
(you can open up the OS X Broadcom kext and see a list of compatible PCI device IDs, I recommend doing this with Leopards kext)
![upload_2019-3-25_15-19-14.png]( "upload_2019-3-25_15-19-14.png")
basically any Wifi card with the above PCI device ID will work in at least Leopard on a PowerPC/Intel Mac
you can install a 802.11n mini PCIe wifi card into a PCIe G5 but thats about it for wifi cards from intel macs, since no PowerBook implements PCIe in any way shape or form
for Bluetooth cards you can use the BT2.0 cards from early intel Macs in PowerMacs all the way back to FW800 MDDs, but I dont know what the BT card situation is like in PBs
indeed you dont need an official Airport card to use the official airport drivers and native OS X utilities, you just need a card that uses a compatible chipset
(you can open up the OS X Broadcom kext and see a list of compatible PCI device IDs, I recommend doing this with Leopards kext)
basically any Wifi card with the above PCI device ID will work in at least Leopard on a PowerPC/Intel Mac
if you play your cards right (literally LOL)
you can install a 802.11n mini PCIe wifi card into a PCIe G5 but thats about it for wifi cards from intel macs, since no PowerBook implements PCIe in any way shape or form
for Bluetooth cards you can use the BT2.0 cards from early intel Macs in PowerMacs all the way back to FW800 MDDs, but I dont know what the BT card situation is like in PBs
indeed you dont need an official Airport card to use the official airport drivers and native OS X utilities, you just need a card that uses a compatible chipset
(you can open up the OS X Broadcom kext and see a list of compatible PCI device IDs, I recommend doing this with Leopards kext)
View attachment 828216
basically any Wifi card with the above PCI device ID will work in at least Leopard on a PowerPC/Intel Mac
Yeah, that file is where I found myself last night. It wasn't clear to me what they were saying — whether to find a card with one of the chipsets in that list, or whether to add a chipset to that list. (Google Translate butchered the translation.)
Also: I hadn't realized the late 2005 PowerBooks were using PCI for the integrated wifi/bt card, not PCIe.
if you play your cards right (literally LOL)
you can install a 802.11n mini PCIe wifi card into a PCIe G5 but thats about it for wifi cards from intel macs, since no PowerBook implements PCIe in any way shape or form
for Bluetooth cards you can use the BT2.0 cards from early intel Macs in PowerMacs all the way back to FW800 MDDs, but I dont know what the BT card situation is like in PBs
indeed you dont need an official Airport card to use the official airport drivers and native OS X utilities, you just need a card that uses a compatible chipset
(you can open up the OS X Broadcom kext and see a list of compatible PCI device IDs, I recommend doing this with Leopards kext)
View attachment 828216
basically any Wifi card with the above PCI device ID will work in at least Leopard on a PowerPC/Intel Mac
This was an amazing tip, @LightBulbFun! Thank you!
I just added a Linksys WPC600N card to the CardBus. The system promptly recognized it as not only an AirPort card, but also as the primary en0 device (relegating the built-in AirPort Extreme to en2, behind Ethernet en1, also making it easier to find and set the OEM to a lower service order). This is brilliant, and the card, basically in unused condition, was something like USD$7.50.
The WPC600N, along with two very similar Buffalo CardBus adapters (for the Japanese Domestic Market), appear to be the only wifi adapters ever made using a system-compatible Broadcom chipset to enable a PowerBook to have native access to both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands using the 802.11n draft specification. This is even better than the third-party 802.11n Edimax solution I use for the Power Mac G5 (which is confined to 2.4GHz).
