I am using old "Roamabout" cardbus cards (OEM orinoco) from Wegener for $27. They only come with OS9 drivers (that work fine for OS9) but for OSX you have to download an OSX driver from ioXperts. The driver costs $20 per card and the serial number for the driver is portable from computer to computer, but not card to card. The OSX driver works just great.
There is also the OS X driver from <http://sourceforge.net/projects/wirelessdriver/>. It's kind of no frills but it's free.
I got the old slow "b" protocol because I was more concerned with range. I got a cardbus card because I have a 550 tiBook with reputedly horrible internal antenna and so I wanted the external antenna. All of the 11(b) equipment is really cheap now because nobody but us LowEndLuddites want it.
LowEndMac user yes but a Luddite of any sort, no.
I use the older model Asante "b" wireless router with the 2 antennas. I put the router high on the wall in the center of my old house that has a lot of wire mesh in the lath. My range from the Asante router to my tiBook is in excess of 250 feet outdoors.
I have the same situation with stucco exterior walls. I've got one location inside the house that goes through two exterior walls to get to the router. I originally used a SMC Barricade wireless router which wouldn't work through those walls. The Belkin router I have now does work to that location.
I bought a D-Link 614+ wireless router here in my office and it works fine for some things, but it does not support appletalk packets. If you buy a D-Link product, better check this out. They sometimes say they are Mac compatible (and they are at the TCP-IP level) but you have to read the fine print to see which of their products support Appletalk---if you have old machines or printers and need it.
Neither of the routers I bought support AppleTalk although IIRC they both claim to. The SMC almost did, it would pass the Zone info but I couldn't access anything. The Belkin seems to only "support" on the LAN which pretty much any of them will. You have to be careful when checking for that issue.
For print servers, many of the old Asante routers have a print server port that used to only work with Windows or Postscript Printers, but now it works with OSX.3. on some other printers--depending on the driver and whether the printer has a parallel port.
I just set up an HP 5850. It works wired or Wireless and is IP so the lack of AppleTalk isn't an issue.
--
Clark Martin
Redwood City, CA, USA
Macintosh / Internet Consulting
"I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway"
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