Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card works in Power Mac G4/466 with Debian Etch
I had no expectation that it would work, but I decided to shove my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA 802.11b wireless networking card into the meant-for-Airport-only slot in my Power Macintosh G4/466 running Debian Etch.
I had never heard that this sort of thing would work.
I shoved the card it. It's quite a bit longer than the pricey Airport card, which I've seen go for near $100 on eBay.
The Mac's antenna plug matched. I connected the antenna wire.
I booted Debian. I opened the Desktop -- Administration -- Networking tool.
There it was, eth2, my wireless card.
I configured it for DHCP. It found a network. I now had wireless networking on a Power Macintosh G4 under Debian without having to buy a thing.
One problem: Since the Orinoco WaveLAN Silver card is quite a bit longer than the Airport card this slot was meant for, there's no way I can even close the case of the G4 while using the Wi-Fi card.
That's a bit of a dilemma, no?
Maybe a PCI card will work better? I wonder what might work ... and if I'll have to upgrade to Lenny to increase my chances of this actually working.
But wireless in Linux on a G4. Amazing.
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Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
If a PCI wireless card doesn't work, you could try a PCMCIA-PCI adaptor, which is $12 on Newegg. They claim to be Linux compatible, but I've been disappointed before.
I'd rather save the PCMCIA card for laptop use. I'd prefer to get a working PCI card and either just use that, or go with wired Ethernet (which I'm leaning toward at this point).