G4 support for Airport Card alternative?

Question

Hi all,
It never dawned on me that there is an alternative to Apple's Airport cards for our systems until recently. I have a G4 dual 1GHz system which houses a hookup for the original airport card; the system also has PCI slots. I have an Airport Extreme Base station and would like to restrict my frequency range to the 5 GHz ONLY (to avoid the crowding of 2.4 GHz range.) So, is it correct to say that my G4 is not tied down to the original airport card but can theoretically use "n" capable WIFI cards via on board PCI or USB? And if so, any you would recommend? Also, how's the software support for it, i.e., drivers, Airport Utility, etc. since the card would be third party and not Apples? Would I get the support from say, Airport Utility as if I had an Apple airport card in there or are there going to be compatibility issues? Many thanks!

Answer 1

OK, I just found this out:
http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2001-July/004174.html
32 bits/33 Mhz : aggregated ideal peak at 132 MB/s
64 bits/33 Mhz : aggregated ideal peak at 264 MB/s
And that's shared between all items on the PCI bus.
It would be interesting to measure the bandwidth on the USB 2 PCI card. I've seen it vary wildly on a G4/400 Mhz Yikes, sometimes dropping to as little as USB 1.1 even with only one USB item connected on an IOGear card. I no longer have access to that machine. That's of course assuming nothing else is sharing the same bus.