Summary: How can I find open wireless hotspots in Mac OS X with an
Orinoco Silver PCMCIA card?

I have a Wallstreet II G3/266 Powerbook with 512 megs RAM, running OSX
10.2.6, with an Orinoco Silver 802.11b card (because the Wallstreets
predate internal Airport). I have to use the Sourceforge wireless
drivers for the Orinoco, because OS X's Airport drivers do not support
PCMCIA wireless cards.  However, these drivers lack certain features
of the Airport drivers.  In particular, you have to know the name of
the public network which you want to log onto already. You can't just
select the network name from a drop-down list the way you could with
Airport.

Thus, in order to locate public networks, I must use a wireless
"sniffer" or wardriving program.  At the moment, there is only one
such program--KisMAC--available.  KisMAC works as far as it goes,
finding all the local networks in the area whenever I turn it on--but
unfortunately, that is not very far, because it reliably causes OS X
to kernel panic on exit.

I have looked into the possibility of using other sniffer programs,
but neither MacStumbler nor iStumbler support PCMCIA 802.11b wireless
cards.  Kismet is reportedly OS X compilable now, but I have not been
able to do so, and I have heard that the OS X version of Kismet might
not support PCMCIA cards anyway.

I have also heard that Apple's Airport drivers are going to support
certain 802.11g cards...but that is not an optimal solution for me, as
I do not want to spend yet *more* money on this laptop.

I am not tied to the idea of using a wardriver program, because I do
not really want to wardrive.  I just want to be able to discover if
there is a public wireless network in my vicinity, and thus be able to
use it.

The money-winning answer will provide an easy way for me to be able to
detect these networks in a trouble-free manner with the hardware that
I already have--by pointing out (or writing/patching) some new
stumbler program of which I am currently unaware, for instance.  I do
not particular care what the solution is--the only requirement is that
it must *work*.  I've become severely frustrated lately over this, and
I just want the frustration to end.

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Request for Question Clarification by supermacman-ga on 10 Aug 2003 21:27 PDT

Apple's new AirPort software (AirPort 3.1.1) is free. You can download
it now, in fact.
http://www.apple.com/airport/
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=70176

However, it DOES NOT OFFER support for third-party 802.11b cards under
OS X. Read here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106205

---------------

For finding wireless networks easily, you can use Kensington's
Wireless Wi-Fi finder:
http://www.kensington.com/html/3720.html

It costs between $20 and $30 USD.

----------------

I know this does not answer your question, but:
1) it provides insight into your problem
2) posting it as a Request for Clarification gets your attention

You said you would use a different stumbling program... Have you tried
out MacStumbler? The interface is very simple to understand and the
program itself is easy to use... I believe you can get it from
http://www.macstumbler.com