PCMCIA card compatibility for Powerbook G3 kanga

[65535]

Got one of these for free, and after replacing the hard drive and a rebuild, works great running 8.1. It has PCMCIA card slots, and would like to know if anyone knows of compatible WIFI card adaptors that would work on this unit. I know that cardbus cards probably won't work in this thing.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Got one of these for free, and after replacing the hard drive and a rebuild, works great running 8.1. It has PCMCIA card slots, and would like to know if anyone knows of compatible WIFI card adaptors that would work on this unit. I know that cardbus cards probably won't work in this thing.

It supports CardBus just fine, electrically. The bay is physically missing the grounding plate; which may make some cards not work right, although some people have physically modified their PowerBooks to have a properly grounded cage.

The old Lucent WaveLAN (later Orinoco) cards are identified as 100%-original Apple AirPort cards, as are a few OEM-rebrands of these (Dell was a big one that re-sold this card as their own.) Until I found someone selling original AirPort cards cheap, I used a Lucent WaveLAN Silver card in my iMac; the OS detected it as genuine Apple AirPort.

For older Mac OSes (pre AirPort,) there are Lucent WaveLAN drivers available.

There are also a few more modern WiFi cards that have their own drivers. NetGear has the best Mac support. (Although if you're not going to hack OS X on, finding a card with OS 9 support at this point would be tricky.) Here's a list of known Mac-compatible WiFi cards, as of late 2007:

http://www.stateofyo.net/metaphyzx/Wireless.htm

 

[Unknown_K]

I use the Wavelan silvers (Lucent) in my Wallstreets running OS 9.2.1 and they work fine. Those cards also work great in old Thinkpads.