USB 802.11 for Old World Macs/OSX |
February, 19, 2003 10:18 PM |
mknagata |
Here's some initial experiences with MacSense's AeroPad USB WI-Fi adapter. Bottom Line: it's working under OS X even though the drivers are still in "final candidate" mode. 1. System: PMac 7300 w/450mhz G4 + XLR8 ZIF Carrier card, 4 x 128 Megs of OWC RAM, Pioneer DVD-ROM slot-drive, MacAlly Firewire/USB combo PCI card, old Farallon Skyline PCMCIA card + PCI adapter combo (for Wi-Fi under OS 9), Radeon 7000 PCI video card. Airport network with WEP (I have 3 other Macs all networked wirelessly). Epson Stylus Color 900 + D-Link print server connected to a router that also services the Airport Base Station (this allows all my Macs to print to a single inkjet wirelessly). 2. For a couple of years, I've used this Mac with OS 9, and connected to my home Airport network through the Skyline PC card. But Farallon got absorbed by Proxim, and though their website promises OS X drivers eventually, I've been waiting for more than 6 months now. I took the plunge with XPostFacto a few months ago, and was no longer willing to wait for Proxim to release their drivers. 3. So... I took a chance and ordered MacSense's USB adapter (after lusting after similar Windows products for a long time!), banking on their promise that OS X drivers were forthcoming. 4. Initially, I just couldn't get their beta drivers to work on my encrypted network... so I used the USB adapter with their OS 9 drivers (it was frustrating to have OS X loaded, but unable to use it to access the internet). Worked like a charm (and got better reception than my Skyline product) with one notable exception: I couldn't keep it reliably connected via wireless AppleTalk to my print server. 5. The folks at MacSense told me they were aware of the problem and were "working on it." 6. A few weeks later, they posted new OS X drivers. BUT... they reported that there was a bug in the firmware of the AeroPad... and the new drivers would only work if the firmware was upgraded. Unfortunately, the only way for a consumer to do this was to use a Windows PC... which I don't have!!! Fortunately, MacSense offered a free mail-in service... so I mailed my AeroPad back to MacSense and they flashed the firmware... I had it back in about a week. 7. The Good News: I am cruising the web via Airport and OS X with my AeroPad adapter and the final candidate drivers. It works quite well. 8. The Bad News: a. The AeroPad has trouble seeing the network and remembering the WEP password on boot-up. If you then open the AeroPad software, it synchs up nicely... but it's a pain to have to do this all the time. The temporary work around I'm using is to add the AeroPad application to my login items so that it automatically opens on boot-up. The "Read-Me" acknowledges some of this boot problem, and so I'm hopeful this will get fixed in the final version of the drivers. b. When I open Print Center, my machine can't "see" the print server through AppleTalk. All my other OS X machines connect to the print server effortlessly, as I mentioned above. My workaround has been to use IP printing and the freeware GIMP drivers with the AeroPad... and this has been a very nice solution which works flawlessly. c. Apparently, the firmware upgrade renders the AeroPad incompatible with the legacy OS 9 drivers. Their tech support folks told me that they would eventually update the OS 9 drivers as well. Well... that ended up being a lot longer than I intended... but I've profited immensely from this forum, and hopefully this will prove useful to others that are seeking a way to get wireless broadband into their legacy Macs using OS X. |
. |
RE: USB 802.11 for Old World Macs/OSX |
February, 19, 2003 10:20 PM |
mknagata |
. |
Whoaaa... what happened to my spacing and paragraphs? I didn't mean for my post to appear as one huge block of undifferentiated text. Oh well... hopefully it's still useful to some of you. |
|
|