Airport Extreme and cardbus 802.11g

[Putnam59]

Hello,

Is there a way to disable the internal Airport Extreme card so I can use a cardbus 802.11g card?

In reading some archives on the web, apparently you can disable an older Airport card, by renaming some kernel extensions.

According to what I have read with regards to the cardbus 802.11g cards, they use the same kernel extensions that the internal extreme card uses. Would there be some clever way through software (automator, applescript, etc) to tell the PowerBook to ignore the internal Extreme card and to use the cardbus 802.11g instead?

If I insert the cardbus card after the PowerBook has booted, I can run ioreg -l -w 0 and can see that ioreg sees both network devices present.

I have considered modifying the info.plist file in the ApppleAirport.kext file to see if that would do the job, but I have my doubts as with the AppleAirport.kext file unmodified, if I reboot the PowerBook with the cardbus 802.11g installed, I get a nasty kernel panic.

Hoping that you can help,

Putnam59

 

[Ric]

Hi there and welcome !

What make/model card do you have ?

What version of OS X are you running ?

regards

Ric

 

[Putnam59]

Hi there and welcome !

What make/model card do you have ?

What version of OS X are you running ?

regards

Ric

Thank you, Ric. You are quite gracious.

I am using a Buffalo G54 or I have a Sonnet Aria (same card, I believe) at my disposal. Target PB is PB G4 15" Aluminum.
OS is 10.4.4.

Cheers and thanks for the quick response,

Jack

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

Is this the card you have ?

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/aria_extreme.html

If so, did it not come with a driver disk ?

It should really be just a case of going to System Preferences-->Network-->Network Port Configurations-->Turn Airport Off then press the Apply button...

...this turns your network card off...then just plug in the other card and configure via the Network settings pane.

I sometimes have two cards in my laptop both running at the same time...

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

For one of my cards an orinoco gold...

I have to use the Wireless driver from here http://sourceforge.net/projects/wirelessdriver/

This then allows me to use this card...

regards

Ric

 

[Putnam59]

Ric,

Thanks for the response and the level of detail you went to. Allow me to offer some detail as well.


Here is where it gets sticky :wink:

>>http://www.sonnettech.com/product/aria_extreme.html

This is indeed the card I am using (one of two), and the sticky part comes in that it uses the same driver as the 802.11 Airport and the 802.11g Extreme. The Aria card is an OEM from Buffalo, which is the other card I have.

My goal is to offer a solution to users so that they don't have to remove the Airport or Airport extreme to use a cardbus card, so therefore I have multiple targets that I am trying to derive a solution for. The 3 classes would be the Pismo/Ti and then G4 PowerBooks and potentially iBooks that use Airport Extreme.

>>If so, did it not come with a driver disk ?
No, no driver. So just turning off the Airport card or disabling the kext is not a workable option.

I have made some progress: I have two Automator apps running shell scripts that on my Pismo, will go in and disable the 802.11 Airport, and then enable the Aria/Buffalo card. This works great, I can easily switch back and forth between the two cards with no problem.

There is, however, a problem: in System Prefs, under the Network pane, if I select Network Port Configurations, I will see the usual suspects, along with an additional listing for Airport. But wait...it gets worse. After switching between the two cards several times, in the Network Port Configs, there will be multiple Airport listings. I can go in an manually delete them, but clearly, not a workable scenario for my customers.

I have tried various methods of turning the hardware on and off, and my lack of knowledge is akin to throwing darts at balloons....blindfolded, that is. I tried moving and renaming the kext for Airport, but since the cardbus card uses the same driver, a flawed strategy. If the cardbus 802.11g used its own proprietary driver, as yours does, this would work.

Currently, I am turning the network interface on/off by using ifconfig command and load/unload kext. This does turn off the network interface, but apparently not the hardware, as both the Network Port Config and Apple System Profiler are detecting and reporting the internal Airport card as well as the cardbus 802.11g card. I am presuming that is how they are reporting the erroneous multiplying Airport sockets. When I first noticed this issue, there were 15-20 listings for Airport in Network Port Configurations.

All the above pertains to the results I have seen with Pismo. I am going to start the process on the PB G4 15" I have available to me today. The Automator apps are not working there. On the Pismo, with both cards present, ioreg reports the internal Airport card as en1 and the cardbus 802.11g as en2. On the PBG4, it is not assigning a network interface to the cardbus card. More to come...and sorry for the lengthy response.

Jack

 

[Ric]

Hi there Jack,

I havent forgotten about this...

just lots on at the moment...as soon as I get 5 I'll have a good think and see what I can come up with...

regards

Ric

 

[Putnam59]

Hi there Jack,

I havent forgotten about this...

just lots on at the moment...as soon as I get 5 I'll have a good think and see what I can come up with...

regards

Ric

Hi Ric,

Good progress has been made! I have a working AppleScript that I call through my Automator application. A follow up question for you: Is there a way to make the Automator application run time only, so the contents can't be viewed, only executed?

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Ric]

Hi Jack,

glad you've got a bit further on !

Does Automator do anything or is the whole 'thing' an AppleScript ?

I can probably knock it up into a self contained Application if you want ? Via Xcode not Automator.

Just email me the bits that you have.

regards

Ric

 

[Putnam59]

Greetings,

It really is AppleScript, just wrapped in an Automator app.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but I am really stuck on the same scenario but on the AlBooks, and I am stumped.

I am beginning to think the way to resolve this would be a Nke or some sort of OpenFirmware to get at the hardware at a low level.

More to come....


Jack

 

[Ric]

Hi Jack,

the AppleScript could be saved as an "Application" out of Script Editor as "Run Only"

Then it can be double clicked to run...but would be uneditable.

I'll re read thread later to see if I can think of anything !

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

...make sure this is a copy of your Script...otherwise you won't be able to edit it !!!

regards

Ric