Orinoco in Airport slot of G4

Submitted by h3ch4 on January 30, 2008 - 3:38am

Too cheap to spend your junk food budget on an out-of-production Airport card?

Use an Orinoco card. Pictured here is an orinoco silver, obtained off ebay for USD10, flashed to gold via alchemy, shed of it's metal cladding, and shoehorned into the Airport slot of a G4 AGP.

Surprisingly, it works fine. I wonder if this will work with broadcom chipsets for Airport Extreme (802.11g) speeds? I suspect yes.

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dankephoto's picture

Submitted by dankephoto on January 30, 2008 - 11:45am.

but sadly, no. Apple's drivers don't see anything plugged into an AP slot unless it's a 802.11b orinoco-chipped card. You'd have to roll yer own drivers, you up for that?
Blum 3

I like the bendy thing you did with the card, I'm amazed it actually still works. My solution was to cut away the interfering metal at the front edge of the chassis, never thought to 'fold' the card itself.

dan k

Eudimorphodon's picture

Submitted by Eudimorphodon on January 30, 2008 - 12:48pm.

Surprisingly, it works fine. I wonder if this will work with broadcom chipsets for Airport Extreme (802.11g) speeds? I suspect yes.

Most (all?) cards faster then 802.11b are 3.3v CardBus, not PCMCIA. (Orinoco Silver/Golds are 5v 16 bit PCMCIA. Check the checkboxes on the bottom of the case.) I've never heard of anyone demonstrating that a CardBus card is electrically compatible with the Airport slot. (And in fact it's been claimed by people who probably know for sure that it definitely only supports the 16 bit PCMCIA/ISA transport modes.) Cardbus slots are backwards compatible with PCMCIA, but the reverse is not true.

You can recognize a Mentat by his red-stained lips, er, you can recognize a Cardbus card by the gold strip above the card connector. I'd say plugging one of those into the Airport slot on your motherboard would be an "at your own risk" maneuver. Do let us know if it works without frying anything. There are lists of Cardbus cards that are Airport Extreme compatible when plugged into a Powerbook's card socket, so... most it could cost you is a couple hundred bucks between the card and your motherboard.

--Peace

h3ch4's picture

Submitted by h3ch4 on January 30, 2008 - 6:32pm.


Most (all?) cards faster then 802.11b are 3.3v CardBus, not PCMCIA.

You are absolutely correct. I had completely forgotten about Cardbus. DOH!

Jon's picture

Submitted by Jon on January 31, 2008 - 9:32am.

It seems the best way to get G speeds from an OAP G4 is either a PCI card or a USB 2.0 card and a Mac compatible USB G dongle.