wireless wardriving on pre-X machine

12 posts / 0 new
Last post
Offline
Last seen: 19 years 2 months ago
Joined: Jun 8 2004 - 15:14
Posts: 9
wireless wardriving on pre-X machine

Hi,

I've been looking into buying a wireless 802.11b card for my old Powerbook 1400 (G3 upgraded) running Mac OS 9.
If I did, is it possible to use Windows and Linux servers aswell? I'm running DAVE 4 on it too.

Thanks

performaman's picture
Offline
Last seen: 17 years 8 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 209
Linux.

By "servers", do you mean "drivers?"
You can't use Windows drivers, period. Diffrent processor archetecutre. You could use Linux drivers under Linux, tho'. Actually, I'd dual-boot with Linux. It has some of the best Wardrving tools (Ethereal, Airsnort, Kismet). But it depends on what kind of card you have.

Offline
Last seen: 19 years 2 months ago
Joined: Jun 8 2004 - 15:14
Posts: 9
i mean

i mean logging on to access points in town and communicating with PCs attached to it. I wouldn't think Mac OS 9 would have the functionality to mount remote Windows drives and networks on PCs so I wanted to know if I could use DAVE or something to do this.

Mostly what I want to do is use the internet.

rael9's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 years 12 months ago
Joined: Dec 26 2003 - 16:21
Posts: 216
Dubious legality

Swiping bandwidth is one thing, but you have to be careful about logging on to other's networked computers. If you are caught it would mean fines and/or jail time.

That being said, yes, DAVE will allow you to log on to Windows shares and such. Linux, depends upon what kind of connection you are looking for.

DrBunsen's picture
Offline
Last seen: 9 years 8 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 946
Might I recommend...

http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/wiki/?Apple

alk
alk's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 years 10 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 369
Wardriving on a 1400 would be

Wardriving on a 1400 would be tedious. No one has written a good Stumbler for Mac OS and the 1400. ClassicStumbler (pretty much the only option) only works with select configurations (the Mac has to be running AirPort). And CS isn't as powerful as some of the Linux tools out there.

Forget Linux on a 1400. AFAIK, the 1400's TREX PCMCIA controller is unsupported, so your wireless card won't work in Linux.

Peace,
Drew

Offline
Last seen: 17 years 1 week ago
Joined: Aug 20 2004 - 18:02
Posts: 76
Support is growing

Support is growing for PCMCIA on the 1400 under Linux. I know of people using Orinoco cards under Debian. I have been thinking of running Linux on my 1400 but been hesitating because of lack of peripheral support. Surprised to see that a lot of those issues have been addressed this year. Still no support for audio or expansion-card ethernet though. Check out the NuBus LINUX project on SourceForge for news.

Offline
Last seen: 18 years 4 months ago
Joined: Aug 15 2004 - 19:24
Posts: 359
Linux on 1400?

Hey,

I guess I might need a new thread on this but . . . what Linux distro will work on a 1400? I got one sitting around and it's getting antsy.

Offline
Last seen: 17 years 1 week ago
Joined: Aug 20 2004 - 18:02
Posts: 76
There are a few...

I am just starting on getting Linux on mine, like today.

It all started with MkLinux (MicroKernel), a lot of subsequent work has been built upon it. There is a lot of info about this project online. In the 90's Apple decided to make a GNU distro for PPC, based on their own Mach kernel. Too bad that Apple was such a mess in those days. An axe suddenly came down on it, and it became very slowly updated by a few dedicated people. The most recent packages I have seen are old. Biggest reason why I never installed Mk is that it has a tiny maximum partition size, like 1 or 2 GB. My 1400 has a 20 GB drive in it, so this just seemed too annoying.

These days, the Linux which has the most active PPC port that I know of is Debian. There are people running Potato, Woody, and Sarge with no problems. Yellow Dog Linux is reputed to be quite friendly (whatever that means), and has a fairly big user base. Some earlier versions have been run on 1400s. Russell Kroll did partial ports of Slackware 8.1, 9, and 9.1. This is Slackintosh, which I am trying to install this week (if my second 1400 has enough RAM). Slackintosh was recently taken over by some other people who are working on a New World version of 10.0-10.2.

The 1400 are NuBus era machines, so most OSs which were designed to run on NuBus macs should be possible on a 1400. Most kernels lack peripheral support. Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of 1400s use upgraded CPUs which might not be supported in a stock configuration. A lot of setups use the MkLinux bootloader to initially start in a MacOS partition, and then boot into a Linux partition. There is supposedly another bootloader which can go directly into Linux. I am going to try the former first, so I can experiment with trying out various kernels. Then if all goes well I'll install that with the latter on its own drive.

Consider that I am a Linux n00b, who is only making steps to install soon. Searches online should yield more knowledgeable links. That's quite a list of PowerBooks you've got there, I'm jealous!

dankephoto's picture
Offline
Last seen: 9 months 1 week ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 1899
well, not for PBs 1400 but . . .

it works with pre-X on PCI PBs eg. 3400 - Drew Kershaw's ClassicStumbler. Sadly it won't work with PBs 1400 as nubus machines aren't supported by Apple's AirPort extension set.

dan k

BDub's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 years 3 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 703
Offtopic

Sorry, I'm offtopic, but I read the thread title and the first thing that went through my head was "Because there are all those wardrivers who hunt down ethernet connections?"

Jon
Jon's picture
Offline
Last seen: 12 years 10 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 2804
For NuBus machines you'll nee

For NuBus machines you'll need BootX and a small install of MacOS to boot Linux. You can use the miBoot disk to boot too, but that's a pain, and there are those NuBUS Macs that don't always have a floppy (Duo, etc.) There are OF setups for PCI Macs that can boot Linux/BSD without MacOS, but they also are at the mercy of PRAM corruption and bad PRAM batts. With BootX you sacrifice a small partition for MacOS (100-200MBs or so) and a bad PRAM won't lock you out of Linux, unless it won't boot MacOS either. At least MacOS is easier to get going again... and then BootX works too.

Log in or register to post comments