Simon Royal.co.uk - Wi-Fi Cards For Mac PCMCIA Slots

Wi-Fi Cards For Mac PCMCIA Slots

The purpose of this page is to identify which PCMCIA wi-fi cards work in the PCMCIA slot of an Apple Mac PowerBook, pre-G3, G3 and G4. This quest started when I first bought my Apple PowerBook G3 'Lombard'. It was the last model not to be supported by an internal Apple Airport. The 'Pismo' the model after the 'Lombard' was when started putting an internal Airport slot in.

Luckily, all PowerBooks (except the G4 12") have a PCMCIA slot. The G3 range and upwards became Cardbus compliant.

Keep checking back on this page, I had been searching and buying on eBay like nobodies business for the purpose of finding which cards work straight out of the box or with third-party drivers.

Some cards come with specific Mac drivers, some work with the Ralink ST2500 drivers.

OrangeWare have released a driver to enable a lot of 'not officially supported' card to work, such as the Sony PCWA-C300S.

Also WirelessDriver.Soundforge have released a Mac driver that enables a lot of Prism/Prism2 wireless cards such as the WaveLAN/Orinoco, Cabletron, SkyLINE and D-link PCMCIA cards for use with Mac OSX 10.2 and Darwin.

There are some Broadcom based chipset cards that work without any drivers, these come up as an original Airport card and the Mac thinks no different.

On a side note, if you want to use an internal card in-place of the over-priced original Apple Airport card, check out this link to GeekTechique who modded a Lucent/Orinoco Silver card to fit into the Airport slot and work.

There is also an excellent reference site at PowerBook Wireless.

PLEASE NOTE: I have tried the hack at GeekTechnique and it works in iBooks, but not PowerBooks. The Airport slot on PowerBooks is in the wrong place and while the Lucent/WaveLAN/Orinoco Silver will function in the Airport slot, it is too long to close the bottom of the case. See the picture below.

SECOND NOTE: I have also tried this Airport hack in an iMac G3. Earlier models were not Airport compatible, while later models require an Airport bracket to install it. So, I got hold of an Airport bracket for an iMac G3 and tried my Orinico card in it. Fitting it in was a tight squeeze, but it did not require any trimming and hey presto it worked no problems.

The following cards work:

Siemens Gigaset 54

Shows up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Broadcom based
It works without any drivers, simply slot it in your PC card slot and when you boot up your Mac it says 'new port found, Airport'.
Check it out here

Aria Extreme G-54 C8 (Sonnet)

Shows up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Broadcom based
It works without any drivers, simply slot it in your PC card slot and when you boot up your Mac it says 'new port found, Airport'.

Aero Card Plus, WPE-700 (Mac Sense)

This has not been tested in OSX, but works fine in OS9.
It has a very strong signal.

Dell TrueMobile 1300 & 1350

Both show up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Broadcom based
This is the best card I have seen and used. It works without any drivers, simply slot it in your PC card slot and when you boot up your Mac it says 'new port found, Airport'.
There are a number of people on eBay selling these cards, the main one being a seller called Value Solution.

Motorola WN825G

Shows up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Broadcom based
This works just the like the Dell TrueMobile 1300. Just slide it in the PCMCIA slot and your PowerBook thinks it is an Airport card.

Belkin F5D7010

There are a number of versions of this card:
v.1000 works with Apples Airport software
v.2000 works with Apples Airport software
v.3000 requires Ralink driver.
v.4000 doesn't reportedly work on a Mac even with the Ralink driver.
v.5000 doesn't reportedly work on a Mac even with the Ralink driver.

Buffalo AirStation WLI-CB-G54A

I haven't tried this card personally, but it works in the PCMCIA slot as an Airport Extreme card and requires no third party drivers, it works with Apples Airport drivers.

Asante FriendlyNET AeroLAN AL5403-XG

I haven't personally tried this card, but assured it works. It requires no additional software, just works with Apples Airport software. This is a very hard card to find.

Cisco Aironet 350

Shows up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Cisco Systems, 350 Series Wireless LAN Adapter
This card comes with it's own utility and doesn't rely on Apples Aiport software. The card works fantastically and the util is very simple to set up.

The following cards do not work:

Orinoco 802.11b Silver

Shows up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Lucent/WaveLAN

Orinoco 802.11a/b ComboCard Silver

Shows up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Atheros AR5001-0000-0000)

Orinoco 802.11b Classic Gold

Shows up in the Mac PCMCIA card tool as Lucent/WaveLAN)

The following cards I know about and am looking for. Some people have had luck with them, some haven't:

Belkin F5D7011

If you know of a card that works or definately doesn't work then please let me know via email. The more the merrier.

I hope to keep adding to this, I will be buying cards and testing them using, native Apple support as well as the third party Orangeware, WirelessDriver.Soundforge and RT2500 drivers.

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This article/page was written/updated by Simon Royal in 2008. If you would like to add your comments, disagree with my views or believe it is stolen, or find it offensive then please email me.