Asante Adds Support For OS X

by , 10:00 AM EST, December 15th, 2000

Asante has released a series of drivers allowing OS X Beta users to take advantage of a number of Asante products. Users of a number of Asante's PCI networking cards, including the GigaNIC series, can now get support for OS X. This release marks some of the first "exotic" drivers to be available for the new OS, joining Newer's processor upgrade OS X software. According to Asante:

Asante Technologies today announced the release of new Mac OS X beta drivers for a number of popular Asante products.
"We've made it easy for our users to download the new drivers," says Nghiep Le, Software Engineer at Asante. "Users can go to the 'Beta Drivers' folder on the Asante website, at http://www.asante.com/support/support.html. Just grab the entire folder '...kext,' and then drop it into your 'System:Library:Extensions' in Mac OS X," said Le.
When Apple finalizes Mac OS X next year, Asante will release its final drivers.
Apple System Requirements
Before downloading Asante's drivers, users should be aware of the following requirements:

Systems compatible with Mac OS X Public Beta: iMac, iBook, all Power Macintosh G3 desktops, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube and PowerBooks introduced after September 1998.
A minimum of 128MB of Memory (RAM) is recommended for using the Public Beta. Mac OS 9.0.4 must be currently installed.

Downloadable Drivers:

Asante Fast 10/100 PCI Card PN #99-00590-07.
For the new driver, please download the folder AsanteFast.kext.
GigaNIX Gigabit Ethernet Adapter 1000 Base T PN # 99-00645-07.
For the new driver, please download the folder AsanteGigaNIX.kext
Asante GigaNIC 1064SX PCI PN # 99-00511-07.
For the new driver, please download the folder AsanteGigaNIC.kext

You can find more information about the products and new drivers at the Asante web site

The Mac Observer Spin:

This is fantastic news! Many of the peripheral companies are making the argument that they don't want to put time into developing a driver when Apple may change something thus leaving the software unusable. Certainly a somewhat justifiable argument. However, there are roughly 100,000 OS X Beta users out there looking for as much functionality as possible.

Congratulations to Asante for taking a step to release these drivers.

Asante