Can any one help me find a OS X. driver for the Orinoco Silver

One more thing....OrangeWare has support for the Atheros 5001 and 5002 series, along with Intersil. Broadcom support is on the way. I believe that is more than one chipset.

Disclaimer: I am an OrangeWare employee

I just wanted to let everyone know that the OrangeWare 802.11 driver will not only be multimode a/b/g, but will be available to end users at around the same price. The key here is speed. IOxperts has done a great thing, undoubtedly. But OrangeWare has taken into consideration the need for speed.

Is a newer mac keyboard compatible with an original style Bonde Blue iMac? The Bonde Blue key board doesn't work with my Flower Power or Cube, but I believe it 's not working at all. My other key boards don't work on the Bonde.

Funny, isn't it Vaughn? While a Lucent PCMCIA card IS in the Base Station, that very same card put into a PB G3 with OSX will not work with the AirPort drivers, it needs a separate driver!
And the freebee open-source driver we used had trouble sometimes with Orinco cards. I was not aware of the retail driver from IOXpers or we would have looked into that. By now, of course, all but one of the non-Airport PBs have been swapped out, and the point is mute...

To answer a few other questions: 802.11a isn't dead--it's quite popular in many installations where 802.11g ends up having the same problems as 802.11b. 802.11g is just an easier upgrade path from 802.11b. In the longer term, 802.11a's advantages (many more non-overlapping channels, better speed since it doesn't need 802.11b compatibility hacks, "turbo" options on some cards that support up to 108Mbps, and a generally less crowded piece of spectrum) may win out for many applications. 802.11a/b/g devices are the really interesting ones, since they will allow interoperability with all three types of wireless network.

(Disclaimer: I'm a programmer at IOXperts)

Edited by author 05-08-2003 09:18 AM
You should note that the OrangeWare drivers are only available to OEMs, not end users, and support only one particular chipset.

IOXperts http://www.ioxperts.com has a retail driver for both Mac OS 9 and X supporting a large number of 3rd party 802.11b cards http://www.ioxperts.com/devices_80211b.html -- support for several more chipsets on the way.

The major reasons we see for people using 3rd party cards are improved reception (TiBook) and cost -- a $30 card plus a $20 driver is still considerably cheaper than an Apple Airport card.

To answer /m11, yes, Apple removed support for the Lucent/Orinoco/Avaya cards in Mac OS X.

(Disclaimer: I am CTO of IOXperts)

11a dead? We'll see. I think some people haven't (/m10 for example- "I also don't see an IT Dept wanting to explain to users why they must use THIS card in THIS area but not in that, and why THIS card doesn't work in THIS MACHINE or at THAT clients facilities.
") quite grasped what the new product plans of people like Proxim and so on are.

The huge cost of upgrading simply doesn't apply. If you buy a Centrino mark 2 notebook, it will, quite simply, work on 11a, 11b and 11g. Intel has held off including g simply because of the dispute on ratification. The question of "which card?" won't be asked.

The same applies to access points. Proxim (and most others) are planning multi-standard. Why wouldn't they? Today, you have to choose; tomorrow, you may not be able to; you'll get a dual standard access point, which will include g and a, thus covering all three.

802.11A is dead, Those who haven't adopted it already sure as hell won't be now that there's a sane alternative. It was a bad idea whose window of opportunity was never going to be any longer than the time until G was approved.

To the Apple Employee ( /m6 ):

I'm a bit surprised... Lucent OEM'd Apple's Airport ('b') cards and I have used Lucent/WaveLAN/Orinoco PC Cards with Apple's own software in PB G3's with nary a hitch.. what am I missing here? Did that complemetary support end in Mac OS X?

I agree with the posters and disagree with the article - you've got it backwards. No-one is going "a", they either own"b" and are not going to run the enormous investment into "a", or are going to move to "g" which offers "b" comptatibity - ( I may be wrong but I didn't see the article comment on that ). I also don't see an IT Dept wanting to explain to users why they must use THIS card in THIS area but not in that, and why THIS card doesn't work in THIS MACHINE or at THAT clients facilities.
One poster mentioned the ADVANTAGE of "a" is the limited range so as to prevent overlap. I really don't see going into every office in my company testing out range/interference and putting separate 802 a/b/g systems to limit/increase range. I'll simply limit the transmitter.
802.a protecol was stillborn before it got going

I don't think msg 6 is wrong, the "standard" will be what people use. Currently, 802.11b is the "standard". "g" will follow as people build out and improve their networks.

For many, the fact that 2.4GHz is long-range is one of the real benefits. Also, devices in the 5.8GHz are becoming more pervasive as well. The hopes of monopolizing a public frequency are short-lived.

I believe if you check on the new Mac notebooks, they've also improved the antennae issues.

Some of you guys are very confident about your predictions! - I have to say, I think time may tell a different story.

The problem with 11g isn't just compatibility with other 11g devices - I'm sure that will be sorted out. The problem is that it's 2.4 GHz, and quite long-range.

The result is that there is a real problem with overlap in offices.

In most office buildings in big cities, if you provided WLAN for every floor of a multi-storey building, you'd find that there simply aren't enough channels. No matter how you plan, you'll find someone else with the same channel covering the same square feet of floor space; and when this happens, coverage is TERRIBLE!

There are, also, an awful lot of 2.4 GHz devices. Video digital senders, Home RF, microwave ovens, Bluetooth, 802.11b and 802.11g all use the same spectrum - and there are others.

In /m6 someone suggested that 11a won't be ratified. It is, of course, already ratified! - I think the poster must mean that it won't become adopted. I think the poster is simply mistaken; I think dense WLAN requires 11a.

The reasons: there are a lot more channels, and 11a doesn't penetrate floors or walls as well as 2.4 GHz wireless. So you can isolate access points. Channel overlap ceases to be an insoluble problem.

For a nightmare description of just how bad 802.11b/g overlap can get, read one report from the German CeBIT exhibition last March! Would you use a WLAN that gave 10 kilobits per second throughput?

Finally, most suppliers of WLAN equipment are planning to move to dual 11g/a devices within the year. Some are using chipsets which do this (like Synad's) and others are building both standards into the AP. The next version of Centrino will include 11a/g clients, and Intel is going to promote 11a very strongly.

Guy

History shows that people always want things that offer backwards compatibility. This is the reason that 802.11g will make 802.11a fall into oblivion. There are millions of computers in use today with 802.11b capabilities. All the new "centrino" laptops use 802.11b. Buying an 802.11a wireless access system for, say 1000 users, would require new hardware for all 1000 users, or an additional $100,000 expenditure at least. However, if the new station is 802.11g, the administrator could give the higher-bandwidth cards only to those who need the higher speed, saving tons of money.