ibook g4

[Inspector Jihad]

hey guys,
i just got my sisters old ibook g4 with osx 10.3. it doesn't have an airport card so i was wondering if there were any cheap usb wireless adapters that would work with osx.

 

[Tegeril]

Occasionally Apple still has the Airport Extreme modules on their refurb store and they are fairly cheap (~$29) and you would be best served by that. Wireless on the Mac without an Airport is a largely unintegrated thing.

Gave this auction a 7 second look over and the price is right:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-Airp...0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

(disclaimer: not my auction, I just did a search).

I want to say that you can get support with a ralink chipset based device, and other atheros devices, but they typically require a separate utility to scan for wireless networks that may or may not actually come from the same manufacturer that made the device (for the longest time, I knew someone with an iBook G3 running some huge usb dongle from Belkin for G wifi and had to use some generic app not made by Belkin to run it, and then always had VPN issues when the device was not connected at startup [Cisco VPN service would have to be restarted]). Needless to say, the $26 or $29 or even up to $40 is totally worth the Airport Express and its integration/reception (iBooks have notoriously great wireless reception).

 

[Inspector Jihad]

my sister had an airport card in there for a while but she said it would not connect to many networks that other laptops connected too. she said her schools IT dept said there was some compatibility issue with the ibook and the airport card. could that be true or was the IT dept lazy and full of shit?

 

[Eug]

There have been some compatibility issues with some specific hardware, but that's true with many wireless adapters. However, given that Airport cards have basically become ubiquitous, I'd say that's no excuse.

 

[Tegeril]

Antenna could have been loose, or it could have been a number of other situational issues including a defective card, but know this...the plastic iBooks got -excellent- wireless reception with the Airport.

 

[Agentbolt]

The late model IBook G4s had serious issues with their Airport cards. If yours is the last model before they came out with the Macbook, I can tell you it's got an Airport card in there, and it's one of the faulty ones.

 

[MovingTarget]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
The late model IBook G4s had serious issues with their Airport cards. If yours is the last model before they came out with the Macbook, I can tell you it's got an Airport card in there, and it's one of the faulty ones.

No problems here with that generation iBook G4 and the airport card. However, these machines are starting to show their age so it is possible it is faulty now. Macs aren't bulletproof. :shock;

 

[Eug]

I was looking around eBhey and saw a few USB wireless adapters with Mac drivers, including for 10.5 Leopard. I can't vouch for any of the sellers, but some had >99% positive ratings.

However, ideally, I'd still stick with the Apple adapters.