Dual-boot Mac OS 9.2.1/YDL 3.0 on iMac DV; Firmware upgrade on old Airport card

[Jim Parks]

Guys -- just wanted to let you all know that I have installed a dual-boot
Mac OS 9.2.1 / YDL 3.0 on a circa-2000 iMac DV (strawberry, I think).

Everything works fine... now.  Things to watch for:

1.  The X configurator detects an ATI Rage 128 card.  This does not work.
You have to change "ati" to "fbdev" in:

/etc/X11/XF86Config

Here are my working Device and Screen sections:

Section "Device"
        # no known options
        Identifier   "fbdev"
        Driver       "fbdev"
        VendorName   "fbdev"
        BoardName     "fbdev"

        #BusID
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier   "Screen0"
        Device       "fbdev"
        Monitor      "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth    16

        Subsection "Display"
                Depth       16
                Modes       "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubsection

EndSection

It still is a little goofy in that if you set your /etc/inittab to boot up
in graphical login mode, you can't log out and then log back in.  The screen
just locks up.

Haven't quite figured that out yet, but I'm not going to put any effort into
it, since I can boot into text mode, log in, and type "startx", then
everything is fine.


2.  If you try to use an old Airport card with 128-bit encryption, it won't
work until you upgrade its firmware.  How, you ask?

First, here's how I figured out that I needed to upgrade the firmware:

I first disabled my eth0 and enabled eth1 by doing the following in
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts:

cp ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth1

jstar ifcfg-eth0  (or use vi, pico, or whatever editor you like.)

make it look like this:

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=no

jstar ifcfg-eth1
I made my ifcfg-eth1 look like this:

DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
ESSID="mynetworknamegoeshere"
KEY="123456789ABCDEF123456789AB"

Remember -- key is your 26-bit hex key.  You can get this from your wireless
router config.... I actually got mine off a Windows XP box on my network by
looking at its wireless network setup and copying it onto a piece of paper,
then typing it in.  I do not know if it is case-sensitive or not, but it
works in all caps.

Did a "/sbin/modprobe airport", then "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart".
Then I put "/sbin/modprobe airport" in "/etc/rc.d/rc.modules" so it would
bring up the interface at boot time.  (Be sure to make rc.modules executable
by root)

ifconfig showed the eth1 device, but with no IP address.  iwconfig showed
the device up, but taking crypto errors:

eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"mynetworknamegoeshere"
Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437GHz  Access Point: 00:04:5A:0E:4A:2F
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:1234-5678-9ABC-DEF1-2345-6789-AB
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:26/92  Signal level:-77 dBm  Noise level:-61 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:23  Rx invalid frag:16
          Tx excessive retries:1  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

See the next-to-last line of the above output?  That "Rx invalid crypt:23"
means that your wireless network doesn't like you.  But at least you're
getting something from it.

After checking and rechecking my key, I started wondering if maybe the old
Airport card was only capable of 40-bit encryption.  I figured there must be
an upgrade available, so went to Apple's website and did a little digging,
and there was.

Well... I don't know any way to do it without booting into Mac OS.  Someone
else may have something to say about this, but here's what I had to do:

This particular iMac DV came with Mac OS 9.1 and Airport version 1.2.
Apparently, Airport 2.0.4 does an automatic firmware upgrade on the card to
make it 128-bit capable.  OK, but to run Airport 2.0.4, you need Mac OS
9.2.1.  So, using my Powerbook (which had an ethernet connection, which the
iMac did not since it was in a different part of the house and I was just
too lazy to pick it up and carry it downstairs) I got the updates from
apple.com and burned them onto a CD.

I booted the iMac into Mac OS 9.1, installed the 9.2.1 upgrade, rebooted
into Mac OS 9.2.1, then installed the Airport 2.0.4 upgrade.  After
rebooting, I was able to connect to my 128-bit encrypted wireless network by
entering "$123456789ABCDEF123456789AB".  Well, not exactly... that long
string of hex characters is the 26-character hex version of my key.  The "$"
at the beginning of the key indicates to Mac OS that a hex string is coming,
but don't use it on Linux (I don't know what will happen if you do, but it
works without it.)

Rebooting into YDL, I found that eth1 came up and was able to connect to my
wireless network.