On May 15, 2009, at 10:56 AM, Mike wrote:

> I went to that URL and downloaded the package for 10.4 (I am on
> 10.4.9).

Upgrade to 10.4.11.


> I installed the application but when I open it  it says No
> Device!!
> I don't see what to do next.

You need to positively identify which chipset the card has. There are  
several possible ways to do this. Sometimes the model # and perhaps a  
version # of the card can identify the chipset, but it's important to  
remember that some manufacturers including Belkin have used several  
different chipsets in the identical model # card, but they absolutely  
MUST differentiate the cards, minimally in the FCC ID #, but usually  
with a letter variation, such as version A, B, C, etc.

You may be able to look in System Profiler under PC Cards and see the  
Vendor ID # and Device ID # listed. These can be listed in two  
different ways, decimal and hexadecimal. You may need convert the #'s.  
Decimal is normally 4 digit, for example Atheros Communications (an  
Wifi chipset manufacturer used by Apple and supported as Airport) has  
the decimal ID # 5772, which is the equivalent to the hexadecimal ID #  
of 0x168c. You can translate between decimal & hexadecimal using  
Calculator set to Programmer mode and use the "Dec" or "Hex" tabs to  
translate from on to the other.

Another way to find the correct chipset #'s is to open Terminal and  
type the command:

ioreg -l

and dig thru the output until you locate the PC card slot and the  
card. This is a last resort and more difficult. Sometimes the ID #'s  
are clipped, for example my D-link DWL-630G card has the chipset IDs  
for Atheros 5424 chipset, 0x168c and 0x001a hex (5772 and 26 decimal).  
Sometimes in ioreg they're shown as 168c,1a. Alternatively, it could  
be shown as 5772,26. A pain.

When you know the two identifying #'s, the Vendor ID and the Device  
ID, you can look them up with Google or using a website such as:
<http://www.pcidatabase.com/vendor_details.php?id=174>

After determining the EXACT chipset, getting a device driver to load  
may involve slightly modifying the kernel extensions (kexts) to be  
certain your exact model is listed within the info.plist file of the  
kext. Apple has had a tendency to support almost no 3rd party wifi  
chipsets for a long period of time, but when Intel Macs were being  
developed under Tiger, the developers were using a lot of non-Apple  
wifi cards, so the Intel version of Tiger from about 10.4.5 onward had  
great 3rd party wifi support, whereas the PPC version never got that  
support. The difference is so tiny, just a list of #'s within an  
info.plist file. For your specific card to work, your EXACT #'s must  
be in the info.plist file, and as I said, PPC Macs got shortchanged on  
the list compared to Intel. The Intel kexts do work on PPC Macs.

I'll not describe the entire process of adding the correct Vendor &  
Device ID's to your kext until you first upgrade to 10.4.11 and also  
identify the exact chipset you're using by determining the correct  
Vendor and Device ID's (preferably in hex) for your specific card.

The best chipsets for Apple, the only ones that mask themselves as  
"Airport" are Atheros and Broadcom. Others that work, such a Ralink  
are slightly more problematic, but can work well if configured with  
the correct extensions and support software.




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