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clar77
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 4:53 pm    Post subject: Airport extreme Reply with quote

I've searched around a bit and can't really find an answer for this one.

What is the status of a driver for the airport extreme card ? I know it uses a broadcom chipset, there's a petition to broadcom to release info or a driver, and that broadcom is less than supportive of the linux community.

What about something similar to ndiswrapper or www.linuxant.org ? Would it be possible to use a driver loader or 'magic' firmware like http://www.prism54.org to get these cards working ? Does anyone know if anyone is working on this ?

It seems like an interesting problem, but would it be impossible to get these cards working without the support of broadcom ?
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woolsherpahat
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 5:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would also very much like to know. The only thing really holding me back against buying an Ibook is the status of the wireless hardware. Is there anyway to even get wireless connections on IBook? How about using an external adapter?
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DrACoNuS
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 6:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use an external USB adapter SMC2662W to connect via wifi on my ibook while in linux. Then i just use the airport extreme the few times i boot into osx.. i still love my ibook but its frustrating when companies don't support what appears to be a very large customer base using the broadcom adapter in linux and not merely a niche market to be overlooked................................................................. argh!@#&
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jdv
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 6:26 pm    Post subject: Re: Airport extreme Reply with quote

clar77 wrote:
It seems like an interesting problem, but would it be impossible to get these cards working without the support of broadcom ?

Take a look at the Broadcom 4301 Linux Driver Project. There's no actual code or anything, but you can see what efforts have been made.

The project has been pretty much dead since November or so, but recently there has been some activity on the mailing list (linux-bcom4301-priv), discussing the possibility of reverse engineering the Mac OS X driver.
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woolsherpahat
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 9:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think that linux Ibook user's as a group should put pressure on apple. I have a feeling Broadcom doesn't care about the possibilty of releasing drivers for us but apple might. If we all write letter's to apple and say, "Well hey, I was going to buy and Ibook which is 95% linux compatible but that last (and very important in my view) 5% that Broadcom is responsible for changed my mind. We understand that as a manufactor you have no control over Broadcom's level of open source support but we also feel that as a very well known company if YOU (apple) request that Broadcom release drivers or at the very least documenation about their chipset the possibilty of change in their level of open source support would be much higher. It's a shame that many linux user's are not spending the $2000 dollars on apple mobile products because of $100 [chipset price, estimated] worth of chipset... thanks for your time"

Point being while I know apple has no control over what Broadcom decides to do with their drivers and level of open souce support... I think apple sending Broadcom a letter would hold a little more weight than if the linux community sent Broadcom a letter. Now if both apple and linux user's sent them complaints... we might be getting somewhere...

Just an idea.
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jdv
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

10k1 wrote:
Point being while I know apple has no control over what Broadcom decides to do with their drivers and level of open souce support... I think apple sending Broadcom a letter would hold a little more weight than if the linux community sent Broadcom a letter. Now if both apple and linux user's sent them complaints... we might be getting somewhere...

Just an idea.

As far as I know Apple doesn't make any high profit on selling their hardware, so I'm not sure they really care about the relatively small Linux/PPC user base. It's kind of like cell phone companies that sell you a cell phone cheaper than they bought it, in order to make money on you using the phone with their services.

I'm not all against the idea, I'm just afraid that Apple will silently ignore it. There's already a petition directed at Broadcom.
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micron
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

One silly quesion: airport extreme is supported under Mac OSx by kismac (ppc port of kismet)?
And so also other linux networking tools (installed throught fink) work with airport extreme?!
I would like to buy it, but I don't like to waste my moneys :wink:
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clar77
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 1:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

airport extreme is partially supported by kismac. it works but doesn't have all of the capibilities of other cards. Packages like airsnort, etc in fink don't support the airport extreme.

I gotta agree about apple silently ignoring requests for a driver. OSx is a big part of apple, argubly bigger than the hardware, I don't see apple going to great lengths to support another OS.

But what would be the possibility of using a wrapper under linux ? the project listed above seems interesting but I didn't see any files newer taht 6mos old in cvs :(
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micron
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

clar77 wrote:
airport extreme is partially supported by kismac. it works but doesn't have all of the capibilities of other cards. Packages like airsnort, etc in fink don't support the airport extreme.

Obviously with a normal airport card everything will work as usual, I'm wrong :?:
If so I'll buy a normal airport card instead of the extreme one...
I hope there'll be support for airport extreme, but I think we'll wait looong time :x
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clar77
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yep the normal airport card will work 100% with kismac or in linux the linux driver is called airport.

I think that the new power and ibooks only come with internal extreme cards but i'm not 100% sure on that. I'm using a cheap 3rd party card for now, hopefully I'll be able to use the airport extreme one day.

enjoy your new mac :)
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micron
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

clar77 wrote:
enjoy your new mac :)

I'm already using an ibook G4 :P

clar77 wrote:
I think that the new power and ibooks only come with internal extreme cards but i'm not 100% sure on that. I'm using a cheap 3rd party card for now, hopefully I'll be able to use the airport extreme one day.

Only on some high pbooks models there's already the airport extreme installed
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woolsherpahat
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 5:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is there anyway to opt to get the older Wireless card with an IBook? The older wireless card only supports 802.11b, correct?

BTW, just signed the petitiononline. I can't believe there's over 6000 signatures.
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woolsherpahat
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

clar77 wrote:

I think that the new power and ibooks only come with internal extreme cards but i'm not 100% sure on that. I'm using a cheap 3rd party card for now, hopefully I'll be able to use the airport extreme one day.

enjoy your new mac :)


What do you mean by "3rd party"? I thought you could only use Apple approved hardware with an Ibook? Could you explain this statement further? Thank you!
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clar77
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 6:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've got a xtrasys card in the PCI slot on my powerbook. works pretty well under linux.
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woolsherpahat
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 6:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

clar77 wrote:
I've got a xtrasys card in the PCI slot on my powerbook. works pretty well under linux.


Are you using a G3 or a G4 IBook?
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clar77
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

actually its a Al G4 Powerbook. :) I know that some USB devices are supported for ibooks without the slots for cards.
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woolsherpahat
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 5:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright, thank you!
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