OS X Hax

Ok. I have a Wallstreet. If I leave the wpc54g in as it boots it hangs up. If I remove the card it continues to boot, but it will crash a little while later.

If I insert the card after it is booted, it sees the card and the AirPort configuration in the Network preference sees the SSID of my WAP, but I cant get an IP address. If I try to assign it manually it still will not ping anything.

If, after giving it the IP information manually, I do an ifconfig -a, it does not show that the information was assigned to the card. It still shows the same info as if I left the configuration alone.

I am going to assume this is because the system will not boot with the card in it and its not initializing something properly.

Any ideas are appreciated.

The Airport Setup Utility does see that card and does see the SSID of the WAP as well, but it says it cannot connect to the WAP.

I have a tiBook 550 (gigabit) and when I borrowed a friends wpc54g and inserted it, it hung on boot. Once I booted into the system though it worked fine seeing the network and such, so I don't know what is going on but it is not exclusive to Wallstreets.

I have the Bronze Keyboard Powerbook G3. No problems with the WPC54G booting or inserting the card after booting. Everything works perfectly!

Hmmm......

What version of X are you running Michael? Do you have classic installed? Does classic load at startup?

I was thinking about doing a clean install of 10.2, applying all the updates and see if the wpc54g will work then with nothing else installed.

My problem is that I can insert the card after its booted and it sees the SSID, but it cant connect to the WAP. I know the card is good because I have it in a Windows laptop right and it works fine.

If I can get it to connect to the WAP, it wouldnt matter much if I have to isnert it later.

I have a bronze keyboard with 10.2.4 and applied the hack; the computer freeze at startup. But, if I insert the card once the system works and lauch the Airport assitant everything works fine after. I have an Apple Airport Extreme base.
It would be much more convenient not to have to unplug the card and lauch the assitant at each startup.

If you see the SSID of the AP, but can't connect, you might try a firmware update for the AP. Apple and Linksys both have updates for their APs that improve things. I found that with my Linksys, however, that I was no longer able to use the 'G only' setting and hook up with my mac. I suspect that is a bug in the AE driver, since the same WPC54G card in a PC works fine with the WAP in G only mode.

So maybe it's not a Wallstreet issue.

To narrow down a bit, the issue I'm talking about is when the boot daisy stops spinning if the card is installed at boot time or system panics at boot time. Any problems associating are probably AE driver bugs that probably happen the same way on the native hardware.

My best guess as to the source of the hangs and panics is interrupt conflicts. It is possible that the AE driver does not understand shared interrupts, since they undoubtedly didn't test it on unsupported configurations.

But I am not 100% sure of this explanation, since it would not explain why people with the same hardware experience different results.

Another explanation would be bugs having to do with emulation of PCI for CardBus devices, but I don't really have any ideas there either.

Both possibilities lie very, very deep within the OS and/or hardware. It's rather doubtful that anyone outside Apple would be able to get to the bottom of it.

Apple may find it useful to try building the AE driver to talk to CardBus cards to see if they can find the bugs and fix them, but their only incentive to do so would be on the off chance that these bugs impact their supported configurations. If I were Apple, I'd look into it, but then if I were Apple, I'd make and sell CardBus and PCI cards to upgrade legacy machines.

We are using the Linksys 54g pc card and hack on a powerbook g3/300 with no hangs or problems on boot or any other time. Everything works fine. We have updated extreme base station firmware to 5.0.5 and run in both 802.11b/g (though the only machine connected is the one above). Can't help beyond that info.

Best,

Leigh Standish

Changing my Linksys WAP to mixed mode fixed the problem. I changed the WAP and I immediately got an IP address from my DHCP server.

Now to tackle the boot problem.

I still might whack my powerbook and clean install OS 10.2 to see if it works fine then, but hangs after something gets installed.

Thanks for the tip on the mode of the WAP Nick. I guess I thought since the card is G that the WAP being in G only would be fine.

I have a wallstreet and also have the hang at boot problem. I have also discovered that after waking the machine from sleep, it does not re-connect to the network. So I put the menu extra on the dock. ("/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/AirPort.menu") After waking the machine from sleep, I just select my network and I am back up and running. After insterting my card after booting, I click the airport.menu in the dock to add the menu to the menu bar, and select my network. If I have to eject and reinsert my card without rebooting, I have to command-drag the aiport icon from the menu bar (it will have an X in it) and re-add it from the dock.

For some bootup Airport 2 settings, take a look in here:
/private/var/db/SystemConfiguration

also if you want to watch what your Mac does during bootup, issue this command into a terminal and reboot :

sudo nvram boot-args=-v
or
setenv boot-args = "-v"

I have a Lombard (Bonze KB G3), running 10.2.4 and have the "hangup" on boot. If insert the card after the OS splash screen everything is fine. I assumed that it was because this machine was "pre-Airport" and is not sure what to do with it.

I have a PB G4 800mhz, running 10.2.4 and have the hangup on boot.
We need to find out what is wrong.
I'm going to reinstall OSX Later

BTY: What versions of OSX did you all initaly start with
Ther powwably could be a problem with the upgrading from the software update.

I reinstalled osx last night.
My computer still locks up during boot.

We need start a hardware/software comparison list to see if we can find commonalities in our boot problems it would also be helpful if those who do have a working card to give us there hardware and software details.
Email the specs to me at rmiller021@mac.com and I will post them to my web page as soon has I have a few to post
These are my specs, feel free to include any thing else you think would be good to have on the comparison.
PB 800mhz
512mb ram
40GB - however unlikely we should compare everything
Original Airport card-disabled
10.2.4
File system HFS+
BELKIN 54G CARD
I just formatted my hard drive 5 hours ago so we can rule that out.

Robbie,

I'm also experiencing the hang on boot issue, but you need to revise your approach if this is going to be solved:

Consider asking for an Apple System Profile report, which will include kermel extensions, frameworks, linksys card version and installed applications.

This information will be ESSENTIAL to resolving this issue. Trust me, it's one of the easiest ways to diagnose configuration problem. If I make any headway in the meantime, I'll post again.

Sounds good, Just email it all to me i will sort it out.

SUCCESS! OK- Here's what I did. I placed my tibook 500 in target mode to my desktop running 10.2.4 ( pre airport 3) I opened terminal and typed:

sudo ditto -rsrcFork /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirport2.kext /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirport2.kext

(it will ask for your password and then life is good)

which replaced the one on my laptop with the one on my desktop.

I then disconnected my laptop, rebooted and re-ran the script-

sudo perl thescript.text

It worked without issue. i then typed

sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

sudo reboot

on my next reboot, all was as it should- no crash on reboot, nothing. I installed airport 3 and everything is great!

Jamie, it seems that the airport 3 installer fixes the boot problem.
The airport 3 software also seems to fix the problem with my signal meter problems.

I thought apple was trying to make it harder for us to do this.

PS : I can now confirm that the belkin pccard (pci1799,7010) works without any problems.

please post more comments, I will visit this site again

Yesterday I upgraded a Wallstreet PBG3 (currently w/ Sonnet Crescendo/WS 500MHz and 512MB) to 10.2.6 then installed the Airport 3.0.4 package and applied the AE Hack for my Buffalo WLI-CB-G54. Works like a champ. Had previously been successful with a TiBook, but wanted to do this for my son's PowerBook.

While fiddling with it, I also installed the IOXperts 802.11b drivers (demo) and tried that with an Agere Orinoco Gold card. That added yet a third interface (en2) and they both/either work fine.

Please help,
I attempted the hack and although It appears that the card is recognized, I see an icon at the top right of my menu bar, I cant access my router and the card is nowhere to be found in network settings. I don’t have a boot problem, but it doesn’t appear that my card is responding, Power light is on, but Link light is out. Also, I noticed that although I moved the two files, Extensions.mkext and Extensions.kextcache the always come back after I reboot, Perhaps this is the cause of my problem. So here's what I have.

My Router: Linksys WRT54G
running in mixed mode, connected to 2 PCs.
WEP is disabled.

My Mac: 550 Mhz Powerbook G4
256 MB 100MHz RAM
20 GB HDD
256 L2 cashe
Boot Rom info:4.2.9f1
Kernel Version 6.6

My Card: PCMICA Linksys WPC54G

Here’s what I’ve done: run the perl script, and remove the files

Any response would be really great. Thanks!

What operating system are you running on the Mac?
When you finish the script, does it give you the "Finished" acknowledgement?
The two extensions should recreate themselves when you reboot with the card engaged in the slot.
These extensions have a memory. That's why you have to run the script with the card out, then trash the extensions (throwing away the memory Apple gave them), then shut down the computer, then insert the card into the slot, then restart the computer.

I have a powerbook G3 Lombard and jaguar 10.2.6. I used a Linksys WPC54G PC card to connect to the aiport extrem base station. Works fine immediatly, and recognize the network. But, both Airport Admin and Airpott config tools crash when looking at the Aiport network ! What append ? It's the latest version of Aiport, 3.1.1
Thanks

chet di

i have a powerbook g3 pismo. i bought 10.3 panther and everytime i install it, it installs fine but when i restart it always halts. i cant even get to the logon screen. somebody have any advice