[X Newbies] Airport Extreme

Bill Reburn bill at pacificcoast.net
Thu Feb 20 11:06:16 PST 2003


On 2/20/03 10:44 AM, "TheMacintoshLady" <TheMacintoshLady at earthlink.net>
wrote:

>>> Does ANY Airport work with OS 9?
>> 
>> They BOTH do.
> 
> Why does it say it requires OS 10.1 as a minimum? I didn't see 9
> mentioned anywhere.

Because Apple are numpties and once they come out with something new, they
don't always make it easy to find that older information, they want you to
buy OSX, OSX hardware and OSX software.

A quick look at the AppleStore and all I see is the new Extreme Basestations
(that require OSX to admin). The previous Graphite (original) and Ice
BaseStations could run from OS9 or OSX (weirdly once you updated it's
software to OSX drivers, you can never go back either). But since Apple has
declared OS9 dead - it is hard to find info on their pages (I looked for
about 10 seconds - can find loads in the Support/Discussion forums).

You can still buy the older Airport cards that fit into all older model
Airport ready machines (running OS9). That machine will not take advantage
of the 54Mbps bandwidth of Extreme though.. They will run at the older
11Mbps.

Seriously - I know you know your way around the Apple site, take a look
under OS9 discussions or Airport discussions. I do not even own an Airport
system.. I am considering it though.. ALL the info is there - it's just a
little deeper than one or two clicks. In fact, it's easy to get
overburdened.

The bottom line is - if you want Airport and you want it to run on OS9
machines only - you will have to look at some vendors that still sell the
original Basestation. If you want Extreme, then you will need an OSX machine
- plus this all depends on how many other OSX machines you have to make it
worthy (since the Extreme bandwidth can only work with the newer OSX Extreme
Airport enabled machines).

I am sure most stores still have them since Extreme JUST came out. Then your
fine.. All the software/firmware updates are still online.



Bill Reburn



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