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Airport Card in PPC Powerbook G4 alternative ?

foz405

foz405

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 24, 2006
70
1
Mount Hutton, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
I just had my Powerbook Aluminium 17" repaired, replacing the optical drive. However, they had a lot of trouble closing the case, and I think that either the airport card is now unserviceable, or the connecting cable is damaged, or the cable just isn't plugged in properly.
I use an Airport Express Unit between my computer and the modem. Is there any external device I can buy that will connect me to the Airport Express Unit, thus circumventing the problem of checking out the inbuilt card. I know it must be crook as it is not shown on System Profiler, yet I can connect from the ethernet port to the modem and everything works. The trouble with doing that as a permanent solution is that the printer connects to that port, and the computer lives on the other side of the room to the modem. The Airport Express works, as it is connected to my secondary computer which I'm using now.
If anyone has an elegant solution which an old person with limited technical capabilities can purchase, please let me know. I'm very hesitant about opening the laptop up again, as I it's old and fragile.

The machine I am having trouble with is a 17" G4 Titanium PPC. I run 10.4.11, the Mac is a 1.5GHZ PPC G4, with 2GB DDR SD RAM.
 
Last edited:
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,558
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
foz405 said:
I just had my Powerbook Aluminium 17" repaired, replacing the optical drive. However, they had a lot of trouble closing the case, and I think that either the airport card is now unserviceable, or the connecting cable is damaged, or the cable just isn't plugged in properly.
I use an Airport Express Unit between my computer and the modem. Is there any external device I can buy that will connect me to the Airport Express Unit, thus circumventing the problem of checking out the inbuilt card. I know it must be crook as it is not shown on System Profiler, yet I can connect from the ethernet port to the modem and everything works. The trouble with doing that as a permanent solution is that the printer connects to that port, and the computer lives on the other side of the room to the modem. The Airport Express works, as it is connected to my secondary computer which I'm using now.
If anyone has an elegant solution which an old person with limited technical capabilities can purchase, please let me know. I'm very hesitant about opening the laptop up again, as I it's old and fragile.

The machine I am having trouble with is a 17" G4 Titanium PPC. I run 10.4.11, the Mac is a 1.5GHZ PPC G4, with 2GB DDR SD RAM.
Click to expand...

AFAIK this is not a Titanium Powerbook, it's aluminium.

I would go back, they did not do a good job on it and should solve the problem.

As for the Airport Card, you can see on this site how it is installed.

Installing PowerBook G4 Aluminum 17" 1-1.67 GHz Airport Extreme

There are plenty of small USB dongles which can do the job but you need one which is confirmed to work on a PPC with OS X 10.4.11.
By the way, if I were you I would install 10.5.8, it is better than 10.4.11 .
 
K

kalel77

macrumors member
Oct 18, 2012
34
0
Perry is right!
If the airport card stopped to work, you need to come back and have them fix it.
Otherwise there are plenty USB wifi keys that will help you bypass the problem instead looking for a airport card.
But first of all I should come back to the store that had you computer repaired ;-).
Cheers
 
foz405

foz405

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 24, 2006
70
1
Mount Hutton, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
kalel77 said:
Perry is right!
If the airport card stopped to work, you need to come back and have them fix it.
Otherwise there are plenty USB wifi keys that will help you bypass the problem instead looking for a airport card.
But first of all I should come back to the store that had you computer repaired ;-).
Cheers
Click to expand...

Thanks. What I was looking for was some advice on a specific USB wifi key (now that I know what they're called). The "store" won't accept responsibility as they say it is a coincidence, as they don't go near that area.
As the computer is very old, I think I'll upgrade to a Mac Mini or similar and use this one as a slave.
I'm too old to fight City Hall.
Grahame
 
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