WirelessDriver FAQ

WirelessDriver Frequently Asked Questions

updated 3/9/2003

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How do I configure the WirelessDriver now that I have installed it?
Why does my powerbook have a kernel panic when I re-insert my card?
Which wireless PCMCIA cards are supported by the WirelessDriver?
Does Apple's Airport software work with the WirelessDriver?
Internet Connect no longer works with your driver, how can I control my modem?
Does the WirelessDriver support AppleTalk?
Does the WirelessDriver support wireless PCI Interface cards?
Does the WirelessDriver support ad-hoc (computer to computer) mode?
OS X networking works but I can't connect to the net in any Classic Apps?
How can I connect to a closed network?
How can I connect to a basestation with encryption (WEP) turned on?
How do I use the keychain to save my passwords?
I rebooted and now I'm no longer connected to my network, what gives?
How do I un-install the WirelessDriver?
Troubleshooting: I have installed the new driver for 10.1 but it isn't working, what can I do?
How do I get the latest source code from cvs?
What bugs are fixed in the cvs code but are not yet in the latest release?
How do I compile the WirelessDriver myself?
Are there any other tricks to try and solve my problem?

How do I configure the WirelessDriver now that I have installed it?

Open the network preferences pane, select the EN1 (or EN2) interface as the active network setting and configure it appropriately for your network (e.g. using DCHP, enter the DNS server ip addresses for your internet service provider).
Open the WirelessConfig preference pane and enter the Network name (this is case sensitive) and the WEP key if using encryption. If you are using a non-Apple basestation, you may want to select the text version of the hex key (see below for more info).

If you do not see EN1 or EN2 in the network preference pane you can try typing the following into a terminal window and then enter your password:

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext
sudo rm -f /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
sudo rm -f /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

if you are still having problems try running the un-installer script, re-install the WirelessDriver and then reboot with your card inserted.

Why does my powerbook have a kernel panic when I re-insert my card?

This has been fixed in OS X 10.2!!!!! No more panics with card removal/re-insertion in 10.2.
For OS X 10.1.5 and below, this is caused by a bug in Apples PCCard support. Do not re-insert a wireless card after you have removed it. It will crash everytime....Sorry. However, it is safe to put your powerbook to sleep, remove the card...travel to a new location, re-insert the card and then wake the system up.

Which wireless PCMCIA cards are supported by the WirelessDriver?

This driver is only for 3rd party wireless cards that plug into the PCMCIA slot on Apple Powerbooks. Most cards should be supported for basic non-encrypted networking, many cards will support 40-bit encryption and some have been reported to support 128 bit. The table below provides a list of cards that we believe are supported. Entries with an asterisk have yet to be confirmed/denied.
Note: You *cannot* replace the internal Airport card on a PowerBook or iBook with a PCCard. The Airport cards use a proprietary bus that is much closer in design to an IDE interface than a PCCard and could cause hardware failure if attempted.

Basic Support	WEP Support	Card Type
Yes	No*	Senao/EnGenius 2511CD PLUS (& EXT2)
Yes	Yes	ORiNOCO Silver
Yes	Yes**	ORiNOCO Gold
Yes*	No*	WaveLAN Bronze
Yes	Yes	WaveLAN Silver
Yes	No	WaveLAN Gold
Yes	No	Farallon SkyLINE 11 Mbps Wireless
No	No	Farallon SkyLINE 2 Mbps Wireless
Yes	No*	Proxim Harmony 802.11b PC Card
Yes	Yes	Cabletron RoamAbout 802.11 DS
Yes	No*	Linksys WPC-11
Yes	No*	D-Link DWL-650
No	No	D-Link DWL-650+
Yes*	No*	NCR WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11
NO	NO	3COM 3crwe737A AirConnect Wireless LAN PC Card
Yes	No*	Addtron AWP-100
Yes	No*	Compaq WL100
Yes*	No*	Corega KK Wireless LAN PCC-11
Yes*	No*	ELECOM Air@Hawk/LD-WL11/PCC
Yes*	No*	ICOM SL-1100
Yes*	No*	Laneed Wireless card
Yes*	No*	Melco Airconnect WLI-PCM-L11
Yes*	No*	NEC Wireless Card CMZ-RT-WP
Yes*	No*	PLANEX GeoWave/GW-NS110
Yes*	No*	TDK LAK-CD011WL
Yes	No*	BayStack 650 and 660
Yes	No*	SMC EZ Wireless PC Card SMC2632W
NO	NO	SMC EZ Wireless PC Card SMC2632W V2
Yes*	No*	Icom SL-200
Yes*	No*	Melco WLI-PCM
Yes*	No*	NEL SSMagic
Yes*	No*	Netwave AirSurfer Plus and AirSurfer Pro
Yes*	No*	ZoomAir 4000
Yes*	No*	Aironet 4500/4800 series
Yes*	No*	Cisco Systems Aironet 340, 341, and 342
Yes	No*	Netgear MA401
Yes	No*	Netgear MA401RA
Yes*	No*	Webgear Aviator
Yes*	No*	Webgear Aviator Pro
Yes*	No*	Raytheon Raylink PC Card
Yes	No*	Dell TrueMobile 1150
Yes	No*	Allied Tellesis K.K. WR211PCM
Yes	No*	Avaya Wireless PC Card - Silver
Yes	Yes**	Avaya Wireless PC Card - Gold
Yes	Yes	Buffalo WLI-PCM-L11G & L11GP
YES	No*	SENAO SL-2511CD+ & 2522CD+
Yes	No*	Belkin F5D6020

* support status is unconfirmed at this time
** 128-bit WEP is supported when connecting to 128-bit access points, 40-bit access points (like the original Basestation) are NOT supported

Please post confirmations of basic and WEP function in our support mailing list so we can keep this FAQ accurate. Any card that uses the Prism/Prism2 chipset should be supportable (and may already be). If you have a card that is not listed here but works, please let us know. If you have an unsupported card (or supported but unconfirmed and not working) that does not appear to be working, please read the rest of this FAQ to rule out configuration errors (the most likely reason for problems). We have created a troubleshooting script that you can download and launch with a double-click. The script will will execute the commands listed in this FAQ and collect information about your operating system. Please copy and paste the informational output of this script into any e-mails you send to our support mailing list. This information will allow us to add support for unsupported cards and help us diagnose any problems you may be having. Double-clicking the script should launch a terminal window and ask for your Admin password. In general, you should be very careful with scripts like this, and only launch them after you have read and understood them or obtained the script from a trustworthy source...the latter is not always safe either...anyone remember the iTunes installer fiasco? ;-). Our script has been tested and is safe, however you have been warned. Two of the commands this script will run are:

   ioreg -l | grep VersionOneInfo
   ioreg -l | grep pccard

The above commands will report the matching info we need to provide support for unsupported cards using the Prism/Prism2 chipset. The script will run the troubleshooting commands listed in this faq and also report info on your network, operating system and machine.

To add the matching info yourself, the relevant information you need is the following:

### wirelesscard info
| | "VersionOneInfo" = ("3Com","3CRSHPW_96 Wireless LAN PC Card$
| | +-o pccard101,696@0,0
| | "IOName" = "pccard101,696"

This info comes from following terminal command when the card is inserted:

   ioreg -l | grep pccard

Now to test if your card is supportable, you will need to edit the info.plist file in the WirelessDriver.kext file. Type the following command in the terminal to edit this file with the pico text editor:

   sudo pico /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist

look for the following lines (note that <> symbols have been omitted for html):

key everything else /key
dict
   key CFBundleIdentifier /key
   string org.noncontiguous.WirelessDriver /string
   key IOClass /key
   string org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver /string
   key IONameMatch /key
   array
      string pccard156,2 /string
      string pccard1eb,807 /string
      string pccard274,1613 /string
      string pccard274,1612 /string
      string pccard138,2 /string
   /array

and add your IOName pccard string (e.g. pccard101,696) as an entry in this array. i.e.:

array
   string pccard156,2 /string
   string pccard1eb,807 /string
   string pccard274,1613 /string
   string pccard274,1612 /string
   string pccard138,2 /string
   string pccard101,696 /string
/array

to save the file type ctrl-x and accept the changes. View the edited file in the terminal to be sure your changes are correct:

   more /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist

now try removing and re-inserting the card, if you are lucky it will now work! Let us know if you have success so we can add the card to our list of supported cards. We will need an accurate name for the card and the IOName info.

Does Apple's Airport software work with the WirelessDriver?

The Airport Admin Utility works fine with our driver. The Airport Setup Assistant and Internet Connect App do not work with the WirelessDriver(see below for workaround). The Airport apple menu extra's do not recognize our driver, thus we supply our own preference pane to configure our driver. Our driver is compatible with and can co-exist with Apples Airport driver & card.

Internet Connect no longer works with your driver, how can I control my modem?

The Internet Connect app does not recognize our driver. There is a free open source utility called "Modem Utility" written by Jonathan Sevy that can talk to your Basestation and tell it to connect and disconnect here: Modem Utility. J. Sevy has also written a number of excellent cross-platform java apps to control & configure Apples Airport basestation that are available from the above link including: Airport Basestation Configurator, Modem utility, Wireless Link Test Utility and the Wireless Host Monitoring Utility.

Does the WirelessDriver support AppleTalk?

The driver supports AppleTalk over IP but will not yet allow printing to appletalk printers. We are working to fix this. To connect to other macs type: afp://ip-address in the connect to server dialog (e.g. afp://10.0.1.3)

Does the WirelessDriver support wireless PCI Interface cards for desktop computers?

No. This is outside of the scope of this project. It falls in Apple's jurisdiction (handled by their IOPCCardFamily.kext which is part of OS X and is publicly available from the Darwin CVS archives). We hope they will support this soon. Cisco advertizes that they support the PCI interface with their new cards & adaptors under OS X. Our driver does not support the PCI interface. We have no plans to actively support this until Apple makes it possible for our driver to recognize these cards. You can try compiling the most recent verions of IOPCCardFamily from Apple to see if these adaptors are supported with our driver.

Does the WirelessDriver support ad-hoc (computer to computer) mode?

No. The WirelessDriver does not properly support computer to computer mode. We are working on it.

OS X networking works, but I can't connect to the net in any Classic Apps?

Try putting your powerbook to sleep and waking it up again. This appears to be a bug in OS X

How can I connect to a closed network?

The driver supports selection of closed networks, provided you know the network name. Open the WirelessConfig preference pane and enter the name and password for the closed network. Apply the changes. Note: the network name is case sensitive.

How can I connect to a basestation with encryption (WEP) turned on?

This feature is not enabled in the 10.0.4 or the first 10.1 versions of the WirelessDriver. To use one of these versions, you must disable encryption (a.k.a. Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP) on the basestation to connect using the WirelessDriver.

If you have installed the latest version of the driver, both WEP and selection of closed networks are now supported for certain cards!! (see the card support table above). To get this working you need to know the WEP key (same as the Network Equivalent Key) for your BaseStation/wireless access point (WAP). Simply launch the WirelessConfig preference pane in your System Preferences and enter the network name and WEP key into the required fields, apply the changes and your connection will be established. For Apple basestations you wil need to discover the hex version of the WEP key (see below). If you are using a 3rd party access point, you may want to use the option in the preferencePane for the text version of the WEP key.

To discover your WEP key there are a few different methods.

Method 1: Ask your local IT admin for the Network name and WEP key ;-). Enter the name and string into the appropriate places in the WirelessConfig preference pane. The WEP key should be in plain hex format.

Method 2: Boot into OS 9 and connect to your basestation using the Airport application. Find the pulldown menu for the WEP key, this will be a non-sensical string like a237c8f9b2. Also take note of the network name. Reboot into 10.1, enter the name and key into the WirelessConfig preference pane.

Method 3: Starting with an open, un-encrypted basestation. In OS X 10.1, launch the Airport Admin Utility and configure your basestation settings, do NOT commit the changes yet. Enable the WEP checkbox (and the closed network checkbox if you choose to). In the Airport Admin Utility, change the WEP password by entering a string of your choice (this is NOT the basestation administration password, it is a WEP password in plain text. It also is NOT the string you will need to enter in the WirelessConfig prefpane later). Select the password icon from the toolbar and a sheet will appear that tells you the hex string you will need to enter as the WEP key in the WirelessConfig preference pane. Now you can update the basestation settings to enable encryption. Launch the WirelessConfig preference pane, enter the Network name, WEP string and apply the changes. You should now have a wireless WEP connection to your basestation.

Apple uses a proprietary hash function to convert the WEP password you enter in the airport admin utility into a hexadecimal formated WEP key. If you want us to be able to use this password directly as the WEP key in the WirelessConfig preference pane, please lobby Apple to publish their secret hash function. If any math guru's out there can reverse engineer it, please let us know ;-)

How do I use the keychain to save my passwords?

The prefpane will automatically store passwords in your keychain. If you switch networks often, you can recall the relevant password by typing the network name into prefpane and then hit the tab key. The password will be recalled from the keychain and automatically entered as the WEP key.

I rebooted and now I'm no longer connected to my network, what gives?

The driver does not and will not automatically connect to a closed and/or WEP encrypted network. To reconnect to your network open the WirelessConfig preference pane in the system preferences. To make this automatic, select the WirelessConfig PreferencePane as one of your login items (this is the default install behavior).

How do I un-install the WirelessDriver?

There are a few ways to do this

    1. Download our un-installer script. Double click the uninstaller.command script to open a terminal window, and enter your Admin password. In general, you should be very careful with scripts like this, and only launch the script once you have read and understood it, or obtained it from a trustworthy source...the latter is not always safe either...anyone remember the iTunes installer fiasco? ;-). Our script has been tested and is safe, however you have been warned.

    2. Via command line in the Terminal, while logged in as an admin user type the following and then enter your password

        sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext

        sudo rm /usr/local/bin/WirelessConfig

also delete the WirelessConfig preferencePane from your /Library/PreferencePanes folder, and delete WirelessDriver.pkg from the /Library/Receipts folder using the finder.

    3. Boot your computer into OS 9 and delete the folder called WirelessDriver.kext in >System>Library>Extensions, the preference pane called WirelessDriver PPane.prefPane from /Library and delete WirelessDriver.pkg from the /Library/Receipts

Troubleshooting: I have installed the new driver for 10.1 but it isn't working, what can I do?

Disable encryption on the basestation or access point via the appropriate Admin utility. Try connecting without encryption and then increase security. Our driver may not yet support WEP for your card

Open the network preference pane and show: active network ports. Drag the en1 interface to the top of the list to set the default ordering that OS X will use when searching for a network interface.

You can also try setting a static ip address for the powerbook. If you are using an Airport basestation, the following should work:

IP: 10.0.1.201
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Router: 10.0.1.1
DNS numbers: supplied by your ISP

If you used the the 10.0.4 installer on OS X 10.1 you will have corrupted your 10.1 install. You will need to re-install the 10.1 version of IOPCCardFamily.kext. An installer is available here. Reboot and try again.

Key troubleshooting tips:

Before posting a question to our support mailing list please check the following items. You can either check these manualy by following the instructions below, or you can download a double-clickable troubleshooting script that will collect information about your system in a terminal window. Please copy and paste the output of the script into any e-mails that you send to our support mailing list asking for help with your problem. The script will open a terminal window and ask for your admin password. In general, you should be very careful with scripts like this, and only launch them if you have read and understood the script in a text editor or obtained it from a trustworthy source...the latter is not always safe either...anyone remember the iTunes installer fiasco?. Our script has been tested and is safe, however you have been warned.

The script will produce the following information (and some additional info):

1. Are you using the latest version of Mac OS X 10.1? Click the apple menu and select "About this Mac", click on the text that says "Version 10.1" and it will show your build number. As of this writing versions 5G64, 5L14, 5M28 and 5P48 should work fine. If you have a lower build number, you will need to update your system.

2. Determine the version of IOPCCardFamily.kext that you are using. To do this, open the terminal, type the following command:

kextstat -b com.apple.iokit.IOPCCardFamily

The version number will be in brackets, it should be 1.1.0 or later. If your build is lower than this or a beta/final candidate version (1.1.0b1, 1.1.0f1 etc), you need to update. An installer for the OS X 10.1 version is available here.

3. To determine the version of WirelessDriver.kext you have installed, open the terminal, type the following:

kextstat -b org.noncontiguous.WirelessDriver

The version number will be in brackets, it should be 1.0.0b4 or later. If your build is lower than this, an installer for the latest version is available here .

If the above does not apply/work for you, please post a message to our support mailing list detailing your powerbook model, operating system version, answers to the above questions etc. and we will try to solve the problem. The more information you provide, the more likely we will be able to help you!

Generally speaking, if your card is listed as supported the problem is likely a misconfiguration of your WEP/network settings/basestation settings. The Network and WirelessConfig preference panes must be configured properly before the lights on the card will stay on.

How do I get the latest source code from cvs?

Typing the following two lines in the Terminal will download the latest source code into the current directory. Do not enter a password when prompted, just hit return.

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wirelessdriver login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wirelessdriver co WirelessDriver

Visit the project development page for more information. You can also browse the cvs tree to find out whats changed recently.

What bug fixes or new features are in the cvs code but are not yet in the latest release?

If you really want the most up-to-date answer then check the cvslogs in webcvs or read the development list. Thus far, the new changes are:

none

We are actively working on solving the appletalk problems, scanning for available wireless networks, better WEP support for more cards, ad-hoc mode, support for USB based wireless devices and we hope to add software basestation functionality soon. All of these take time, please be patient as we work on this project in our spare time.

How do I compile the WirelessDriver myself?

You will need to install the OS X 10.2 developer tools. This is a free download from Apple once you register as an Online developer (this IS free!). Find the file called WirelessDriver.pbproj in the source code, double click it to launch project builder. Select the "targets" tab and check the deployment build style. Click on the build button (hammer) to compile the driver. Do the same for the file called WirelessConfig.pbproj selecting the preference pane target..then the command line tool target and the signal meter target......pretty easy eh? Now you need to copy WirelessDriver.kext from the new build directory into /System/Library/Extensions, WirelessConfig to /usr/local/bin and WirelessDriver PPane.prefPane to /Library/PreferencePanes. You can put the SigMeter anywhere. Make sure the WirelessDriver.kext is owned by root so that it will load correctly. To ensure this, type the following in the terminal:

chown -R root.wheel /System/Library/Extensions/WirelessDriver.kext

Reboot and Enjoy!

For more information on using Project Builder and Interface Builder see the Mac OS X Developer documentation

Are there any other tricks to try and solve my problem?

You can repair your permissions using Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities). This can solve a bunch of problems for some people.

Some people have reported problems accessing some sites or sending e-mail via a wireless card. Some ISP's require a change in the MTU. You can adjust the MTU setting for your wirelesscard's network interface with the following command:

sudo ifconfig en1 mtu 1492

for more information see this hint