"No Airport Card is installed"

[numediaman]

I purchased an Airport Card today and installed it. But now the computer is telling me that no card is installed.

I know the card is installed properly (I've done this before). This is an older PBG4 -- so it has the old card, not Airport Extreme.

Could the card be the issue?

[MoparShaha]

Make sure there is no dust in the contact areas of the card and the computer. Also, make sure the card is firmly seated in the slot. Many times, a loose connection is the source of these problems.

[numediaman]

We can put a wrap on this problem. I'll go through the process, though, for those who search the archive for similar problems.

Apple thought I had a bad card. I went to a nearby Mac reseller. They plugged in a new card and still no go. I tried to go through the simple answers. It turned out, as it often does with Macs, that it was indeed a simple answer.

Turns out that the extensions for Airport were off. Why? Remember that I once had an Airport card in this machine. When the card was taken out, the extensions for Airport were turned off. When the new card went in, and new software was installed, no new extensions were installed -- either because these are installed by the system software, or because the Airport software sees that extensions are already there and does not install new ones.

Normally, when you install software, you don't check the Extensions folder because you assume that whatever extensions are put in there they will be "on".

When I got the machine home I still had difficulty connecting to the Netgear router -- but these issues were worked out in short order and I am now wireless with this Mac.

[MoparShaha]

So I'm assuming this is OS 9?

[numediaman]

Well, I thought this would all end happily. But no.

Ten minutes after posting my happy solution, the Powerbook died. I mean really died. Nothing. No start up sound, no boot up, nothing. You press the power button and the screen lights up blue. If you wait twenty minutes you get the Mac OS 9 box, then a bomb. Now I'm really pissed. Nothing like a worthless box of metal to make your day. Hello Dell.

[MoparShaha]

Have you tried starting it up with the AirPort card taken out? Also, try removing any extra RAM. You can also try resetting the PRAM. To do this, hold down Apple+Option+P+R at startup. Let it chime 3 times. Lastly, hold down the shift key at startup to turn extensions off. Good luck.

[numediaman]

Chime? It no longer chimes once! Just for the fun of it I took out the Airport card, but obviously this has nothing to do with it. The only thing I can think of is this: dead hard drive.