AirPort: Apple Computer's 802.11b (currently - could change in future?) that is standard 1-2-5.5-11 Megabit transmission over the 2.4Ghz frequency spectrum. Depending on which country you live in, it can use up to 13 (11 in the US) channels - akin to CD radio channels, though none are reserved for the police :-).

The sell a BaseStation for about $300 - which includes a 56k modem, a KarlNet based 486 PC with 4 MB memory (flashable), and a Lucent/Orinocco/whatever Silver (40/64-bit WEP encryption). The BaseStation is an AccessPoint - and a hackable one at that!

The AirPort client cards sell for about $100 from Apple, and fit in any modern Mac CPU - G4 Towers, iMacDV's (400 MHz or newer), any iBook, newer G3 PowerBook and any G4 PowerBook.

They've got a pretty detailed consumer-level description at: http://www.apple.com/airport

Modifications for the Base Station can be found at: http://www.vonwentzel.net/ABS/

Running Linux on a Graphite Base Station: http://www-hft.ee.tu-berlin.de/~strauman/airport/airport.html

Hardware Details of the Graphite Base Station: http://www-hft.ee.tu-berlin.de/~strauman/airport/airport_description.html

N.B. The above refers to Apple's AirPort base station v1, aka "Graphite" (they're gray). Apple released a new version of the AirPort, v2, commonly referred to as the "Snow" base station because of its white case. Snow base stations are completely different from the original graphites -- instead of a 486 running KarlNet, they use an embedded PPC 860 running vxWorks. No one seems to be working to port linux to the Snow just yet. It is easier to add an antenna to a Snow, however (no Dremel required).


[CategoryHardware][CategoryHistorical]

AirPort (last edited 2012-03-09 22:51:29 by RussellSenior)