FreeBase

FreeBase is a free Windows software to configure the Apple AirPort Base Station.

At US$299, the Apple AirPort Base Station is the cheapest wireless Access Point that complies with the 802.11b wireless networking standard. It comes with an Ethernet port, a V.90 modem and it includes the WaveLan card.

Unfortunately, it only comes with configuration software for the Apple Macintosh Operating System.

FreeBase was written to allow Windows users to configure the Base Station, and to allow replacing the WaveLan card with a 'WaveLan/Orinoco Gold' card so users can have strong encryption.

You're looking at what was once scheduled to be a quick "one week project".

FreeBase is written in Visual Basic, and the source code is freely available.

- Plug in the power to your Base Station. If the center light lights green and the other lights are off, your Base Station has finished booting.

- In your Network Neighbourhood setup, set your "TCP/IP -> ORINOCO" or "TCP/IP -> WaveLan" properties to get an IP address automatically, and delete any existing router addresses and Domain Name Servers. This will cause your PC to obtain all network addresses from the Base Station using DHCP. The Base as it comes out of the box is configured to give out addresses between 10.0.1.2 and 10.0.1.50.

- Under version 6.0 and later versions of the driver go to the control panel applet for WaveLan and set your WaveLan Network Name to 'ANY' (without the quotes). Under earlier versions, set the network name to 'ANY' using the Network Properties of the WaveLan adapter.

- Boot your PC

- Run FreeBase

- You should now see your Base Station and be able to configure it using the password 'public' (without the quotes).