Recently, I bought a couple of Buffalo AirStation Wireless Ethernet Converters so I could move my ancient laser printer and server out of sight. These converters let you ‘air up’ devices which don’t have a slot for an onboard wireless card. It seems I’m not alone in finding the poorly translated manual which comes with the devices no help at all in getting them configured and running, and in finding the Buffalo helpdesk slow and unresponsive. However, after three weeks of haranguing emails and the threat of sending the devices back, I finally received instructions that work, which I’m posting here for anyone else having configuration problems:

Connect one of the Ethernet Converters to a pc with an Ethernet card. Set the IP address on the Ethernet card to 1.1.1.2 and re-initialise the Ethernet Converter, this will bring the Ethernet convert back to factory default of 1.1.1.1. Open a web browser and type in 1.1.1.1 for the address. This will give you the Ethernet Converter configuration page.

There’s also a firmware update which doesn’t seem to have made it to their website. You can find an archived copy here.