so always looking for deals for customers, and needed an alternative to the crazy prices on the original airport cards. found some 802.11b stuff that would work if you tried hard enough, but didn't have much luck with 802.11g. just got an adapter today that seems to work really well and thought i would pass it along. again, only had one day, so take it for what it's worth.
found several sellers advertising usb 2.0 802.11g adapters supporting os x that all kinda looked the same. and then happened to be surfing geeks.com and saw a windows only adapter that looked just the same for $14.99, and had free shipping due to a holiday promotion. figured what the hell. works just fine with os x 10.4.x and should work with 10.3.x as well. the adapter has some issues with the intel stuff from what i was able to gather from boards/google. it is working just fine on the ibook g3/500 with only usb 1.1 that i just installed it on. i am only using wep here due to my remote location, so no idea on how it would handle better security. links:
USB Adapter and the Drivers that i used. the chipset is 'zydas 1211', but zydas has been sold to 'atheros' and they are making direct downloads really hard to find. i also managed to find the user guide, but the link i used this afternoon is now dead. basically install the driver, restart the computer, go to system preference, network, 'new port found' then click apply, then install the usb adapter and use the 'wlan setup' to create the connection.
so anyway, 54mb wifi via usb for less than $20, and a couple of downloads. the driver/setup is not very friendly, but seems to work ok once the connection is setup. several restarts, lots of walking around the house, and no problems, and good range. best of luck to all!
found several sellers advertising usb 2.0 802.11g adapters supporting os x that all kinda looked the same. and then happened to be surfing geeks.com and saw a windows only adapter that looked just the same for $14.99, and had free shipping due to a holiday promotion. figured what the hell. works just fine with os x 10.4.x and should work with 10.3.x as well. the adapter has some issues with the intel stuff from what i was able to gather from boards/google. it is working just fine on the ibook g3/500 with only usb 1.1 that i just installed it on. i am only using wep here due to my remote location, so no idea on how it would handle better security. links:
USB Adapter and the Drivers that i used. the chipset is 'zydas 1211', but zydas has been sold to 'atheros' and they are making direct downloads really hard to find. i also managed to find the user guide, but the link i used this afternoon is now dead. basically install the driver, restart the computer, go to system preference, network, 'new port found' then click apply, then install the usb adapter and use the 'wlan setup' to create the connection.
so anyway, 54mb wifi via usb for less than $20, and a couple of downloads. the driver/setup is not very friendly, but seems to work ok once the connection is setup. several restarts, lots of walking around the house, and no problems, and good range. best of luck to all!
