Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

parrothead

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 24, 2003
644
0
Edmonds, WA
My sister very short-sightedly didnt get an airport card in her tibook when she bought it a few years ago. Since no one sells the old airport card that would fit anymore, can anyone tell me which card would work (in the PC card slot of course) She has a 1 GHz Tibook running Tiger. The card I just bought is a belkin Wireless G 54 Mbps Notebook Card. It didnt work and I looked up the specs and it only lists up to 10.3 compatibility. No drivers are available for download. I know Belkin makes another 125 Mbps card, does anyone know if that will work? It doesn't say online.

Thanks
 

Leareth

macrumors 68000
Nov 11, 2004
1,569
6
Vancouver
lots of places carry the original airport card usually around $75 USD
try ebay sometimes cheaper sometimes more expensive
also most mac resellers will order it for you from apple
 

parrothead

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 24, 2003
644
0
Edmonds, WA
Well, I went back to CompUSA and exchanged the 54 card for the 125 card. We put it in right there in the store and it worked. It is pretty cool actually, OSX sees it and treats it just like a built in Airport card. So for future reference if anyone needs to get a wireless card, get the Belkin 125 mps card.
 

anubis

macrumors 6502a
Feb 7, 2003
937
50
Some PCMCIA cards work, some don't. My girlfriend is running a Linksys G card, but it only operates at B speed in Tiger, no extra drivers. I was looking around on the internet and may have found a third party driver that would make it work at G, but havn't tried it yet.

None of the wifi card manufacturers actually make their own chipset. All brands of cards use essentially the same 4 or 5 brands of chipsets (Prism, Prism II, Broadcom, ORiNOCO, etc.). Most of the Linksys G cards use the Broadcom chipset which is usable in Mac OS X with no drivers. The latest version of the Linksys G, however, uses a different chipset that doesn't work in OS X. So you can have two of the exact same brand and model of cards and they will have different chipsets. One will work in OS X, the other won't. Usually there's no way to tell what version or chipset the card uses by examining the box. You just have to gamble. Unless you can try the card before you buy it, better to just find an Airport card.
 

alex_ant

macrumors 68020
Feb 5, 2002
2,473
0
All up in your bidness
You want a card that uses the 802.11g Broadcom chipset. There are several different chipsets in G cards, and you want the Broadcom one because that's what Apple uses in its own AP Extreme cards. The Linksys WPC54G uses this chipset and it DOES work - I use it myself in a Ti 550 and it does NOT require any drivers in 10.2, 10.3, OR 10.4.

I don't know if it works at G speeds because I only have a B hub, but I don't see why it wouldn't.

Apparently some manufacturers including Linksys swap around chipsets without telling anyone, though, in which case some WPC54Gs might work and some might not, but in any case, they only cost $30 and you can always re-sell a dud.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.