OSX86 Leopard and PCI Express "mini" (laptop) WiFi Support

Zaxboi · December 2, 2007

Am trying to get Leopard up and going on an ACER 3680 laptop (Celeron M / 440, 1.8Ghz

SSE3), 2GB of RAM, 80GB SATA disk on ICH7, GMA950 graphics, Marvell/Yukon

onboard ethernet, Atheros 5007 mini PCI Express WiFi card. I am using the

"osx 10.5 leopard 9a581 in your intel/amd sse3" distribution built using the Windows

installation method (image/dd copy). Leopard loves the system

except for any attempt at networking, sound and graphics work great, loves the disk drive

and interface, doesn't seem to like the PC Card interface, Marvell Yukon ethernet not seen,

Atheros drive loads "unsuccessfully" on the way up. I have also purchased a Broadcom 94311

Mini PCI Express WiFi card. On both I have done the "tape over pin 20" to mask the

RFKILL "feature" of the laptop, this is known to work on the Broadcom card I bought as I

tested it under windows and it worked without ACER's enabler. Leopard does not see

the Broadcom 94311 at all although attempts at using Uphuck's 10.4.9 distribution panic

the kernel when it tries to bring the card up when installed in the machine so it "sees"

it Atheros driver also "loads unsuccessfully" when that card is in the system.

In short, does anyone know if Tiger or Leopard support ANY of the mini PCI Express WiFi

cards out there? In theory it should see the Broadcom one I have as its PCI ID is

identical to others like it (14e4,4311) but does the Broadcom driver check the subsys ID?

I checked the IO80211b.kext file, plugin for both, the ID's are there to match.

Any help appreciated as well as any idea as to how to get the Marvell/Yukon driver for

the onboard gigabit ethernet to work on Leopard, I've seen "fleeting" support for it on

other 10.4 distributions.

Thanks.

ergosteur · March 30, 2008

networking works fine with chun-nan's IOPCIfamily.kext

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