Boyd, Aside from the Quickertek, the only express card that I know of that works with the native airport drivers is the DLink DWA643. There is limited hotswap support for these. If you boot without the card, it will be recognized after the first insertion, but subsequent removal will require a reboot to re-recognize the card. This is a limitation of the built-in drivers which just weren't designed for the hardware to go away. Belkin made some N express cards that used the same Atheros chipset, but finding them is difficult. Belkin changed the chipset to RAlink without really differentiating the product, so its usually tough to look for the right one. If you don't need access to 802.1X, you might be OK with the RAlink cards, of which there are several. These use a separate driver from Apple's Airport driver, and should deal with the hotswap issue. I've also heard that the Ubiquity super range express card uses the Atheros chipset, but is expensive, and would have the same issues as the Quickertek and Dlink cards. I've personally used the Belkin Atheros and Dlink cards, and have not had any issues outside the inability to remove and replace without a reboot. I would love to have a better solution, but at this point, I think this is the best we've got.
--DH
Date: March 31, 2009 2:25:10 PM PDT
Subject: [Fed-Talk] Expresscard Wireless Ethernet adapter for MBP
Can any one recommend a good third party wireless ethernet (802.11g or higher) card other than by Quickertek that
1) works well with Leopard 2) shows up as an airport card (or uses the sat configuration UI) 3) supports dynamic insertion and removal in the ExpressCard slot
I have a QuickerTek 34mm-1 but its flaky and I have to reboot in order to use it. My internal Airport is physically disabled.
thanks, boyd
Daniel S. Hoit Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory phone: 925-424-5256 |