yup too bad WPA 2 doesn't work. I could easily change that on my network but I have so many machines in my home it would take a long time to get them all changed
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Breakthrough!
- Thread starter CC_333
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NJRoadfan: Yes, by all means please do test! I'm pretty sure it will work, but it never hurts to confirm.
SuperToaster: That generation of iBook shouldn't be terribly different from the PowerBooks I've been testing, but it's hard to say if it will actually work or not. I suppose it wouldn't hurt?
commodorejohn: WPA/WPA2 and Wireless G would be wonderful things to have. Even Wireless B would be enough, but it seems we'd have to come up with a new WiFi driver from scratch, so it's definitely nontrivial (unless somebody can hack up the existing AirPort drivers). Hypothetically, if that were done, we could possibly hook it into the existing AirPort software so that it would look and act as expected by the system despite having it's own driver (it would also allow us to use the existing tools and accessories unmodified).
c
SuperToaster: That generation of iBook shouldn't be terribly different from the PowerBooks I've been testing, but it's hard to say if it will actually work or not. I suppose it wouldn't hurt?
commodorejohn: WPA/WPA2 and Wireless G would be wonderful things to have. Even Wireless B would be enough, but it seems we'd have to come up with a new WiFi driver from scratch, so it's definitely nontrivial (unless somebody can hack up the existing AirPort drivers). Hypothetically, if that were done, we could possibly hook it into the existing AirPort software so that it would look and act as expected by the system despite having it's own driver (it would also allow us to use the existing tools and accessories unmodified).
c
You KNOW I'm excited about this! 
If the AirPort cards never work out, how about replacing them with something for which open source drivers are available? I like hardware fixes! 
If the AirPort cards never work out, how about replacing them with something for which open source drivers are available? I like hardware fixes!
I figured you might be, especially since you happen to have a "supported" model! 
That might actually be doable, except I'm not sure if there exists a viable card that would be compatible with the interface (the AirPort Extreme slot is some sort of proprietary thing I think).
However, if it's viable, then it would be an excellent thing.
However, even then, someone would have to still create a driver for it. It would help if it were a device where all the inner workings are well documented, though.
c
That might actually be doable, except I'm not sure if there exists a viable card that would be compatible with the interface (the AirPort Extreme slot is some sort of proprietary thing I think).
However, if it's viable, then it would be an excellent thing.
However, even then, someone would have to still create a driver for it. It would help if it were a device where all the inner workings are well documented, though.
c
AFAIK the AirPort cards are just PCMCIA, right? I think it's a Broadcom chipset, which is always a pain from a third-party hacking standpoint, but IIRC it's been documented enough to be supported in Linux. The big question I'd have is whether the OS9 software for wireless support is well-understood enough and whether it has enough hooks to be hackable.
Airport Extreme (IE, the 802.11g wireless in non-9 compatible PPCs) is electrically mini-PCI, not PCMCIA, and it's mechanically proprietary so you may have issues trying to plug a normal MiniPCI card into it. (It's an experiment I've never heard having been tried.) Unless someone knows of a PCI wireless chipset with 9 compatible drivers that also happens to come in a mini-PCI version I think you're pretty much starting from scratch here.
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I think a PCMCIA card with OS 9 drivers is the only viable solution for now (at least for those G4s with a PCMCIA slot), at least until we can get something going with the internal slot.
I think OS 9 can see it (a PCI slot entry exists in ASP, which contains an unknown card whose name is "pci80211", which I assume is the APe card), so that part is already good (OS 9 ought to support the slot itself, since it's a variant of PCI, which has been available on Macs in some form for ages).
So, anyone here able to make up a quick driver? It needn't be pretty, it just has to work (preferably, it could just hook into the existing infrastructure provided by the existing AirPort software, so we don't have to modify everything else; doing this would hopefully also have the side benefit of perhaps making the driver little more than some simple "glue" that will translate the newer "language" of the APe card to something the old driver understands, which would probably be easier to write than a full-on driver).
Also, I think we should revisit the possibility of getting USB 2.0 working, since it would be fun.
c
I think OS 9 can see it (a PCI slot entry exists in ASP, which contains an unknown card whose name is "pci80211", which I assume is the APe card), so that part is already good (OS 9 ought to support the slot itself, since it's a variant of PCI, which has been available on Macs in some form for ages).
So, anyone here able to make up a quick driver? It needn't be pretty, it just has to work (preferably, it could just hook into the existing infrastructure provided by the existing AirPort software, so we don't have to modify everything else; doing this would hopefully also have the side benefit of perhaps making the driver little more than some simple "glue" that will translate the newer "language" of the APe card to something the old driver understands, which would probably be easier to write than a full-on driver).
Also, I think we should revisit the possibility of getting USB 2.0 working, since it would be fun.
c
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I'm sure this is a dumb question, but has there *ever been* a third-party wireless card with an OS 9 driver? (Other than the Lucent Wavelan, which is basically cheating given it's the same chipset as the Apple one and the original Airport was essentially a licensed version of it. Pretty sure that includes the software driver as well. I know there were some companies that were selling other-branded Orinoco-chipset cards but likewise they "just worked" with the existing software.)*
OS 9 was never exactly a hotbed of open-source development so unless someone volunteers to give you the sourcecode for a network card driver they wrote at some point you're probably looking at developing a driver completely from scratch. I'm reasonably sure that the "Airport" support from Apple is pretty much a self-contained bundle and not really a modular framework for supporting arbitrary network cards. Not to say that if you could get the source for it you couldn't cut down on the amount of work required by hybridizing it with parts of a card driver lifted from Linux or one of the *BSDs, but, yeah, source, where is it? (Also, practically speaking, an 802.11g driver absent WPA support is probably of negligible usefulness, so also figure on grafting a WPA supplicant into your hybridized support package.)
I will mention that there *were* a very few 802.11b Mini-PCI cards made that incorporated a variation of the Orinoco/Prism chipset behind what was essentially a minimal PCI->ISA bridge, but I'm extremely skeptical that the standard Airport software would be able to find said chip in the nonstandard place and work with it even if one of those cards were to physically (and electrically) fit in the standard Airport slot. (When these monsters came out the Linux driver for them needed some TLC in order to initialize them properly.)
(* EDIT: Okay, I guess according to a page on LEM there was a Classic OS driver for early Cisco Aironet cards, and there was also a 9.2 driver for a USB device made by Belkin and sold under a few different names.
http://lowendmac.com/2009/wifi-for-desktop-macs-running-mac-os-9/
So Lucent isn't the *only* one. Just close.)
OS 9 was never exactly a hotbed of open-source development so unless someone volunteers to give you the sourcecode for a network card driver they wrote at some point you're probably looking at developing a driver completely from scratch. I'm reasonably sure that the "Airport" support from Apple is pretty much a self-contained bundle and not really a modular framework for supporting arbitrary network cards. Not to say that if you could get the source for it you couldn't cut down on the amount of work required by hybridizing it with parts of a card driver lifted from Linux or one of the *BSDs, but, yeah, source, where is it? (Also, practically speaking, an 802.11g driver absent WPA support is probably of negligible usefulness, so also figure on grafting a WPA supplicant into your hybridized support package.)
I will mention that there *were* a very few 802.11b Mini-PCI cards made that incorporated a variation of the Orinoco/Prism chipset behind what was essentially a minimal PCI->ISA bridge, but I'm extremely skeptical that the standard Airport software would be able to find said chip in the nonstandard place and work with it even if one of those cards were to physically (and electrically) fit in the standard Airport slot. (When these monsters came out the Linux driver for them needed some TLC in order to initialize them properly.)
(* EDIT: Okay, I guess according to a page on LEM there was a Classic OS driver for early Cisco Aironet cards, and there was also a 9.2 driver for a USB device made by Belkin and sold under a few different names.
http://lowendmac.com/2009/wifi-for-desktop-macs-running-mac-os-9/
So Lucent isn't the *only* one. Just close.)
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Yes, as you already found in Low End Mac. A few USB devices were sold supporting Mac OS 9, of the extended wi/WaveLAN/PRISM family.
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Yeah, it'll do that unless you enter some OF commands in NVRAM which pertain to changing the "cpu version" property to something OS 9 understands. It's the same type of trickery used by some G4 CPU upgrades.
Details are at the TC thread I linked to.
As for WiFi, it's pretty clear to me that for anything reasonably modern needs drivers to be written from scratch, and thus is quite non trivial, unfortunately.
In the meantime, one can use an Airport compatible card (on those G4s with PC Card slots) or an ethernet bridge (for those without).
Regardless of these setbacks, it's quite a remarkable acheivement.
c
Details are at the TC thread I linked to.
As for WiFi, it's pretty clear to me that for anything reasonably modern needs drivers to be written from scratch, and thus is quite non trivial, unfortunately.
In the meantime, one can use an Airport compatible card (on those G4s with PC Card slots) or an ethernet bridge (for those without).
Regardless of these setbacks, it's quite a remarkable acheivement.
c
I got OS9 mostly booting. Its locking up right when the progress bar fills (with and without extensions). Ironically I'm booting from the OS9 install that Apple put on the HD from the factory for use with Classic. I suspect it might have something to do with the lockup, so tomorrow I'm going to copy over an OS9.2.2 install from my beige G3. I don't know if this drive has a driver partition or not, OS X's Startup Disk control panel let me switch to the folder as a boot disk. If copying over another 9.2.2 install doesn't work, I'm likely going to have to reformat and install that stupid driver partition.
SOOOO close on this one.
A side effect of modifying the nvram with the compatible Mac flags (MacRISC and machine ids) is that OS X runs dog slow on the machine.
SOOOO close on this one.
A side effect of modifying the nvram with the compatible Mac flags (MacRISC and machine ids) is that OS X runs dog slow on the machine.
That bomb screen reminds me a lot of the Atari ST. Not something I would expect from a Mac, which is cool!
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