Using the Apple USB 2.0 Ethernet Adaptor on 10.4.x

[ifrit05]

I recently bought an Apple USB 2.0 Ethernet Adaptor to use on my Beige G3 running 10.4.11 to overcome it's meager 10mbps port. Nothing happened after plugging it in and it did not exist in Network Preferences. Well, after searching the web I found out it used an ASIX AX88772A chipset.

"Great!" I thought, "I'll just download drivers from ASIX." Well, that didn't work either as the .pkg required 10.5.x. So after searching for a bit and landing on some sketchy sites I finally found an older installer for 10.4.x. After rebooting and plugging in the adaptor Network Prefs. found a new device and I was able to configure it.

So, my present to you guys is the installer so you don't have to waste time searching for it. It's a good way to add 10/100 Ethernet to your older Mac without sacrificing a PCI slot (Mine are fully populated with an Adaptec 133 IDE controller, Sonnet Tango 2.0, and a Radeon 7000).

 

[Project Alice]

I recently bought an Apple USB 2.0 Ethernet Adaptor to use on my Beige G3 running 10.4.11 to overcome it's meager 10mbps port. Nothing happened after plugging it in and it did not exist in Network Preferences. Well, after searching the web I found out it used an ASIX AX88772A chipset.

"Great!" I thought, "I'll just download drivers from ASIX." Well, that didn't work either as the .pkg required 10.5.x. So after searching for a bit and landing on some sketchy sites I finally found an older installer for 10.4.x. After rebooting and plugging in the adaptor Network Prefs. found a new device and I was able to configure it.

So, my present to you guys is the installer so you don't have to waste time searching for it. It's a good way to add 10/100 Ethernet to your older Mac without sacrificing a PCI slot (Mine are fully populated with an Adaptec 133 IDE controller, Sonnet Tango 2.0, and a Radeon 7000).

Funny, I have been thinking about getting a gigabit USB ethernet adapter that uses that same driver, to overcome the meager 10/100 port on my G4 Mac Mini (Yes I know USB 2.0 is a bottleneck but it'll still be way faster than the 100mb RJ45 port for local networking).

 

[bobesch]

For machines with only USB 1.0 a Firewire-connection would circumvent that bottleneck.
There is no Firewire-To-Ethernet-adapter, but it's possible to connect two Macs via Firewire-cable or via Firewire (or even Firewire-Thunderbolt-adapter), which automatically creates an adhoc network-connection between these two Firewire-connected Macs.
I was really exited, when I occasionally found out about that a few months ago, because it was much help for transfer of large amounts of data directly instead of using external media or a slow ethernet- or wireless-connection or having to boot one machine in TargetDiskMode.
Sharing a faster internet-connection, optical-drive or attached external media is also possible.

 

[Amethyst1]

FWIW, this USB ethernet adapter was sold for the Nintendo Wii and has the same chipset as Apple's.

(not my image)