I was hunting for a solution for new / new-old-stock (rather than used / untested) wifi adapters to use on a couple of my MorphOS machines. I figured I would record what I have found thus far.



Pciscan shows this as a BCM4360 chipest. I was really hoping the "BCM43XX" drivers would work on this. Who knows, maybe it just needs some prodding but it wasn't plug'n'play like the factory Airport Extreme in these machines. I ended up picking up a used 661-3614 module just in case. Kronos mentioned that the A1027 would work in a different slot but I haven't looked into that yet.

Here are the first 4 lines of the PCISCAN info:

BoardObject 0x1401155C Owner <>
Bridge <pci5> Bus 8 Dev 0 Function 0
Vendor 0x14E4 <Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries> Device 0x43A0 <BCM4360 802.11ac Dual Band Wireless Network Adapter>
Revision 0x3 Class 0x2 <Network controller>







This one worked out of the box on my G4 Powermac. The antenna came as a 3" high plastic base with a 3 foot cable. The Ebay item photos showed a much more elegant card-mounted antenna type but oh well, it works flawlessly with great reception.

Here are the first 4 lines of the PCISCAN info:

BoardObject 0x14010E34 Owner <b43 unit handler>
Bridge <pci1> Bus 0 Dev 21 Function 0
Vendor 0x14E4 <Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries> Device 0x4320 <F5D7001 v1000 Wireless G Plus Desktop Card>
Revision 0x3 Class 0x2 <Network controller>


-E

I think the "mini routers" are the best solution if you want to go wireless. Of course it's yet another gadget around (albeit small), but you don't have to worry about drivers, they usually work very reliable speeds etc., and you can easily connect them on any machine with an ethernet port.

> G4 Powermac 3,4 (533 Mhz PCI slots for expansion)

All 4 PCI slots are 33 MHz on that machine. In fact, the PCI standard is 66 MHz at best. 533 MHz would be PCI-X v2, but even the G5 PowerMac only has up to 133 MHz PCI-X v1.

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You can plug that into slot designed for the Runway-card and it will work, but...

- No way to secure it
- No plug&play with the pre installed antennas

Never gotten around doing much with it and the G5 is both dead and superseded by Mirari.

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I have a wifi extender in use at my location. It seems to be difficult (impossible?) to set up a static IP (for VNC etc) with extenders since they may mask the client attached . I did try to connect via ethernet cable on my G5 but I can say I can confirm G5 ethernet connections to be unsupported at this time (unless I missed something).

Ideally, I can get a newer, stronger adapter and bypass the extender and set a static IP. Maybe there are extenders out there that can maintain a static IP? If so, then I will certainly consider getting a PCIe ethernet card and a new extender.

Thanks for your input!

=E

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I wonder if the A1027 signal strength would be any different that the factory unit. I would love to get some more signal strength. Good point about the antennas. The card is only half the solution, now to find proper donor antenna as my 1117 only has the two wire antenna...

Thanks for your input!

I did test it with a set ripped out of an old QuickSilver G4 case.

My final never realized plan was to cut them of and solder them to a small PCB leftover from some PowerBook that has the right sockets for the G5 antennas.

I grabbed an Atheros AR5B22 wifi card to test on the 11,2 G5. We shall see what happens when I get it.

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You have to set static address in extender, which works with my extender(s). And if not: you can set static address also in MorphOS Net-prefs!

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I have set a static IP in the router for my extender and printer. I then set a static IP on my extender for my G5. I will see if it is stable and reliable. I suppose my only complaint is that the router shows devices connected to the extender as the same IP as the extender. Connections may sort themselves out, but I would love to see all my device IP's clearly on the router instead of being masked by the extender.

Much of this static IP business was in effort to use a network printer. I have since put the network printing on the back burner and print via USB. If I had a wifi connection as strong as modern devices have, I would be using a static IP already.

Thanks for the input!

-E