Networking a PowerBook 1400

[RogerWilco6502]

Ok, so I am having an odd issue. I'm trying to use a Dell TrueMobile 1150 (Lucent Technologies/WaveLAN chipset) with my PowerBook 1400 running Mac OS 8.1. I have installed the driver software, ruled out the possibility of the card being dead, and made sure both PC card slots were functional and I can't seem to get it to work. It shows up on the desktop, it is detected by the system, but it can't be activated and seen by the driver software for some reason.

Everything I have read indicates that what I have done should work, but I'm getting no results. Does anyone know why?

 

[eyoungren]

No idea, how to help you or what even is going on. But…

I found this: http://forums.system7today.com/viewtopic.php?t=2923&sid=36709d569b67f38b834caa7fd95f86ec

Which mentions software drivers (and of course the website is gone). So, the Wayback Machine has this: https://web.archive.org/web/2008110...isc/wavelan/software/IEEE/PC_CARD/APPLE/v600/

Which has a valid download link for Oct 6, 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/2008100...isc/wavelan/software/IEEE/PC_CARD/APPLE/v600/

I just downloaded the drivers. Absolutely no idea if that even helps or not though.

 

[RogerWilco6502]

No idea, how to help you or what even is going on. But…

I found this: http://forums.system7today.com/viewtopic.php?t=2923&sid=36709d569b67f38b834caa7fd95f86ec

Which mentions software drivers (and of course the website is gone). So, the Wayback Machine has this: https://web.archive.org/web/2008110...isc/wavelan/software/IEEE/PC_CARD/APPLE/v600/

Which has a valid download link for Oct 6, 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/2008100...isc/wavelan/software/IEEE/PC_CARD/APPLE/v600/

I just downloaded the drivers. Absolutely no idea if that even helps or not though.

Thanks for the info. I found those, and those are the drivers that fail to detect the card. I wonder if getting an older version of the software would help at all, maybe this version has some specific quibble with 8.1.

I can always try to install Mac OS 7.6.1 on another CF card sometime soon and see if that helps.

 

[Raging Dufus]

I tinkered with PB1400's a lot back in the day, and managed to get PCMCIA wireless working on several. I don't have time to dig out my own machine and test it, but attached to this post are the instructions I used (PDF created from an archived web page) and here's a link to the driver:

ORiNOCO™.smi.sit

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

​

Also attached is another PDF with lots of info about the PB1400, including a little about wireless networking. FWIW. Have fun with your 1400!

 

[RogerWilco6502]

I tinkered with PB1400's a lot back in the day, and managed to get PCMCIA wireless working on several. I don't have time to dig out my own machine and test it, but attached to this post are the instructions I used (PDF created from an archived web page) and here's a link to the driver:

ORiNOCO™.smi.sit

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

​

Also attached is another PDF with lots of info about the PB1400, including a little about wireless networking. FWIW. Have fun with your 1400!

Thank you so much! I look forward to trying it out

On a different note, I found some different versions of the driver software. They all gave the same result however.

 

[RogerWilco6502]

Ok, so it didn't work, which points me to a hardware incompatibility. I'm thinking I'll try this card next, as it appears to be a WaveLAN card, so it might work better than the Dell cards I was trying.

Orinoco Classic Gold PCMCIA WiFi Card Model PC24E-H-FC | eBay

<p>Orinoco Classic Gold PCMCIA WiFi Card Model PC24E-H-FC. Condition is "Used".</p>

www.ebay.com

Also the Dell cards aren't listed among the cards that use the WaveLAN chipsets on this Wikipedia page even though they appear on other lists:

ORiNOCO - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[RogerWilco6502]

Ok, so an update: Bought a WaveLAN Silver card that showed itself working on a PowerBook G3 in the eBay listing. It worked great initially. I left it running for about an hour and went to shovel snow. When I got back, it refused to connect to anything and so I restarted it. It then started doing this odd behavior where both the power and activity LEDs would blink simultaneously. Everything from the OS to the driver to the AppleTalk and TCP/IP control panels would see the card, it just wouldn't connect to anything.

So then after two hours of troubleshooting, I went to go eat dinner and, while eating, I left it unplugged and powered off (there's no battery). This was for about an hour. When I came back, I powered it on and it worked fine for about ten minutes until the OS froze and I needed to force a reboot, then it returned to its previous state.

Every so often, it will seem like the card is being activated for a second or two, then it will return to the previous state.

Any idea what would be causing this? I can attach a video of the behavior if need be.

 

[RogerWilco6502]

Ok, seems to be a hardware issue. I'm going to return the card and get a different card of the same model.