OK - I think I'm starting to get some grip on these things.

Bought the cheapest Wireless Base Station I could locate (Addtron
AWS-110 / $ 99.00 at Fry's). Updated firmware & software and apparently
does 64 & 128 bit WEP - so far so good.

Bought some used Wavelan IEEE - Silver - Updated firmware (obtained
Windows & Mac software from www.wavelan) - apparently these cards are 64
bit WEP but uncertain if the upgrade didn't enable the full 128 bits -
perhaps not.

Have a Macintosh Cube with an Airport card - updated to Airport 2.01
which supposedly takes it from 40 bit to 128 WEP.

So far so good...

If I set it to an open system, Windows & linux connect easily, get DHCP,
connect on the lan, surf the net. Macintosh (whether OSX or OS9) gets
DHCP, surfs the net but AppleTalk isn't routed - Addtron is apparently
deaf to that protocol. I heard much the same was true of the Linksys
wireless base stations and clearly I can pony up the full $300 for the
Apple Base Station if routing AppleTalk packets becomes important - ugh.
OK, I can live with that but Macintosh cannot print to lpr printer -
that's a problem.

If I set 64 bit encryption on Addtron Base station, I can attach in
linux and in Windows but not Macintosh. Macintosh doesn't seem to like
64 bit encryption and I haven't been able to make it work at all. Seems
the Addtron adds encryption keys only in hex - no big deal according to
Apple's web site, just add '$' to front of string to input hexadecimal
'passwords' (encryption keys) but it still no workee.

Anyone got any experience making disparate protocols like these working
on cheapo cheapo hardware?

I was playing with one of my clients setups - has original Apple Base
Station which apparently - even with Airport 2.01 upgrade, still only
works 40 bits of encryption - but I am not certain on this...it let's
you pretty much enter a free form password (encryption key I suppose)
but the Orinoco and other wireless cards I have seen are fixated on key
lengths... IIRC 5 & 13 in string form for 64 & 128 respectively, and 10
& 26 in hex.

All bones tossed my way will be appreciated.

Craig