Please Help, Aria Extreme and Lombard PowerBook

[mowogg]

I have a Lombard PowerBook that I have been updating for my daughter. I have bumped the ram up to 320Mb and have replaced the HD with a 40Gig Hitachi.
I have also picked up a Sonnet Aria Extreme WiFi card for the PC Card slot, with the intention of hooking it up to my Airport Extreme base station.
According to Sonnet, the Aria Extreme card should show up as an Airport card.

When I plug the card into the laptop, the PC Card icon appears in the menu bar. Selecting that offers three options, two grayed-out saying something like "unknown card" and one choose-able to "power-off the card".
When, following the directions, I start up the airport setup assistant, it can't see the card. When I installed the new hard drive I also put on it a clean load of 10.3. After that I hooked the PowerBook up to my network via ethernet and updated all software through the software update.
Sonnet says the card should work with 10.3.4+ and Airport 3.1+, both of which are on the machine.
I should also note that I was able to get a Wavelan Silver card to work in the machine, but switched to the Aria because I need WPA2 support, so I am sure the card slot is working. Also, neither power, nor link lights come on when the Aria card is plugged in.
I am about to contact Buy.com for a replacement, but wanted to post to see if anyone has a suggestion of something I may not be thinking of before I do.

Thanks in advance,
Rob

 

[Makosuke]

I happen to have "maxed out" a Lombard at work with nearly identical specs: Latest version of 10.3, larger hard drive, more RAM, and an Aria Extreme card.

And mine worked flawlessly, so I'm really not sure what's wrong in your case--a faulty card, maybe?

It sounds from your description like you're trying to get it to work by "hot plugging" it, however; if memory serves, the MacOS won't recognize it as an Airport card if you do that. You need to shut the computer down, insert the card, then reboot--once it's started up with the card installed, it SHOULD recognize the card as an Airport card and work smoothly.

 

[mowogg]

I happen to have "maxed out" a Lombard at work with nearly identical specs: Latest version of 10.3, larger hard drive, more RAM, and an Aria Extreme card.

And mine worked flawlessly, so I'm really not sure what's wrong in your case--a faulty card, maybe?

It sounds from your description like you're trying to get it to work by "hot plugging" it, however; if memory serves, the MacOS won't recognize it as an Airport card if you do that. You need to shut the computer down, insert the card, then reboot--once it's started up with the card installed, it SHOULD recognize the card as an Airport card and work smoothly.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give it another try. I'm thinking I received a bum card as it refuses to show anything on the card's lights, no matter what. I've sent an email to Sonnet and am thinking I'll have to send this one back to Buy.com for a replacement.

Nothing's ever easy.

Thanks again, I appreciate your response!
Rob