Trying to set up a wireless bridge

I’ve got Ubuntu Linux running on an old Mac G3, but it doesn’t seem to have built-in drivers for the little D-Link Wireless USB adapter. So I can’t get network connectivity to the Linux Mac which is a real bummer.

I dragged the box into the living room, where my cable modem and wireless router sit. Plugged the Linux Mac into one of the wired ports on the router and it works fine. So I know that networking is possible, just apparently not wireless networking. At least not with the particular wireless adapter I have for the old Mac.

So I think maybe I can set up a wireless bridge instead. I’ve got this old Llinksys WAP11 access point that I haven’t used in years. Mainly because it doesn’t support the VPN protocol that my employer uses so it got replaced by a newer SMC access point several years ago. The Linksys has been sitting in a storage box ever since.

I dug it out yesterday and tried for about 30 minutes last night to get it set up for bridging. I know it’s possible, at least according to the manual. It just isn’t very clear from the directions how to do it.

I’m going to spend some time today poking around in Google to try and find more detailed instructions. It feels like I’m close, but in the frustrating way where you don’t really know what the last couple steps are.