3rd Party WiFi for Mac

September 7, 2005 5:52 PM

Anyone using third-party wireless cards with a G4? I see there are third-party drivers available for some cards. Anyone successfully using these?
posted by mzurer to computers & internet (5 comments total)

I used to use the WirelessDriver with a PCMCIA card on a G4 PowerBook that got very poor reception with an internal card. It worked very well for a several years but the limitations (no compatibility with utilities like iStumbler/MacStumbler, kernel panics if you didn't follow the exact voodoo-like procedure for card insertion or removal, etc) eventually got to me.

On the recommendation of someone on the driver's mailing list, I bought a Buffalo brand card that used the same chipset (?) as a "real" AirPort card and would work with the system's built-in AirPort driver. It was infinitely better.
posted by bcwinters at 6:25 PM on September 7, 2005

I use the IOXperts 802.11b driver for an Engenius card on my powerbook.

It works much better than the WirelessDriver did, and in general is pretty good. The user interface (a preference pane) isn't quite to the usual high Apple standards, but it does the job. Overall I'd say it's definitely worth the small amount of money I paid.
posted by jjwiseman at 10:34 PM on September 7, 2005

I've had this Orangeware driver ($15 shareware) for over a year with no problems. I've not tried any others though, and have nothing to compare it with.
posted by p3t3 at 7:06 AM on September 8, 2005

I know I'm late, but a second shout out for the Buffalo card on a PowerBook G4 - plug and play, has worked perfectly...
posted by jalexei at 11:31 AM on September 8, 2005

One of the coolest things you can do with the active cards is use Kismac for much cooler wifi fun
posted by filmgeek at 9:59 PM on September 28, 2005