Installing reluctant drivers

ronan-kennedy (apparently) - 05:45am Mar 24, 2006 PST
via email

I'm looking for help with a somewhat odd and probably very obscure
hardware installation problem. I am trying to get a Farallon PN796
USB-to-Ethernet adapter working with Mac OS 9. According to the
information in the xlr8yourmac Networking FAQ, this can be made to work,
and the drivers are available for download there. However, running the
driver installation program is very problematic. I have learnt that the
Installer Engine program must be present in the folder containing the
Mac OS 9 drivers before the installer script will run.

On the target Mac (an iMac DV SE with a dead Ethernet card), the script
ran once only. It now refuses to open. (The system asks if I want to
open the file with Installer Engine and then nothing happens.) On other
Macs, it runs once the Engine is present but refuses to install drivers,
saying that it must be run from the original diskettes. Creating disk
images or physical floppies with the correct disk label makes no
differences.

The files with the installer script are TomeViewer files which contain a
number of extensions. These can extracted and installed manually but the
iMac still doesn't recognise the adapter. (The adapter does work; I have
tested it on another Mac running OS X.)

What I'd like to know is, does anyone have experience with these
devices? Is there any way of editing the Installer script so it doesn't
need to be run from a particular disk, or at least seeing if it does
something other than install the extensions? Is there any way of
persuading Mac OS 9 that the correct drivers are installed?

Thanks,

Rónán