Wireless USB Adapter works with G3 iBook

[Forrest]

Just thought I'd let everyone know that I had success using a Trendnet TEW-424UB 802.11b/g wireless adapter with my 700 MHz G3 iBook running OSX 10.4.11. I had to find a substitute for the original 802.11b Airport card, since the Airport card doesn't work with WPA2 encryption. OSX drivers are available on Trendnet's website, and this is one of a handful of wireless adapters that advertises OSX compatibility. This adapter is available online for $20-$25

A quick note on setup. You need to install Trendnet's drivers WITHOUT the adapter plugged in. After installation, you'll need to reboot WITH the adapter plugged in. You won't boot successfully until you plug in the adapter - note this is only for the initial setup. After the adapter is configured properly, I was able to reboot without the adapter plugged in and was able to switch between ethernet and the wireless adapter while powered up.

 

[bibilit]

Thanks for sharing

 

[Forrest]

Update - I'm not getting full speed from the Trendnet adapter. I'm on 3 Mbps DSL service, and routinely see 300 KBps downloads from a wired connection on this iBook. However wirelessly, with a signal strength of 2 or 3 out of 5 bars when connected to my 802.11g router, I'm only getting download speeds of 140 KBps. Still useable for most purposes (except video streaming), but was expecting better performance.

 

[jruschme]

Is the iBook USB 2.0 or USB 1.1?

If it is 1.1, then that is probably the bottleneck as you would be limited to USB Full Speed (not High Speed).

JR

 

[PowerPup]

There aren't any iBook G3s with built-in USB 2.0. So yeah that would be the bottleneck.

 

[Forrest]

The G3 iBooks all have USB 1.1, so you're right about it being the bottleneck.

 

[coius]

USB 1.1 Tops out at 12Mbps, or rather ~ 900KiB/s - 1.2MiBytes/sec. So that's most likely not the bottle neck. I would check if your adapter is getting good reception.

You should be getting close to 802.11b speeds, or there-abouts as that is close to the speed of the original Spec.

Also keep in mind, your system, if it uses WPA, will be doing all the encryption/decryption on your iBook Processor. If the CPU can't keep up and do other things, your CPU might be bogged down. Just keep that in mind since the internal Airport would to WEP-128 on an internal processor on the card.

Usually USB Wireless adapters just capture the signal, send it to the driver and the driver uses your CPU to do the calculations. This can lead to speed slow downs as the CPU is doing a lot at once (web browsing, OS, etc...) and not being able to offload.

You would be better setting up a guest network, or secondary WEP network (802.11b) that is segregated (for security) and getting an internal airport card for the iBook. That's your best bet.

Just my $0.02

 

[johnklos]

Total speed of USB 1.1 is 12 Mbps, but one single device can only use 8 Mbps total. That's not the bottleneck, though. Those USB-wireless adapters have a lot of software overhead. When I used one on my iMac G3, I regularly saw lots of extra red and green in the CPU history of Activity Monitor. I switched back to ethernet and ran a cable because of that overhead.

 

[Forrest]

According to Activity Monitor, the wireless adapter was using 10% of the CPU resources while connected to the wireless network. When I disconnected the adapter and attached a wire, this dropped to 3%. I tried the same adapter on an Intel Atom based netbook running Windows XP, connected to a USB2 port and saw 300 KBps downloads. Both computers were the same distance from the wireless router.