Adding WIFI to 2.3 Powermac G5

[Bob Jovi]

Hi,

I need to add WIFI to my powermac as I'm now too far away from the phone socket to use the ethernet cable. I was wondering which non apple PCI wireless card would be compatible. Also I've heard some cards show up as airport connections - this would be good.

Thanks,

Bob

 

[velocityg4]

Here are some 802.11G cards
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity|1&Ne=5000&N=6979&Ntt=802.11g

Here are some 802.11n Cards
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity|1&Ne=5000&N=6979&Ntt=802.11n

If you have the early Dual Processor G5 you can use either the PCI or USB adapters. However, if you have the late 2005 Dual Core G5 you use PCI-e and can not use the PCI cards, so USB adapters only. Find out which model you have first as a PCI card is preferable to a USB model especially since you can add aftermarket antennae, but also so the USB Bus is not being used thus less of your CPU resources are being used.

 

[Bob Jovi]

Thanks for the reply.
Is there anyway that I can tell which type mine is. Will I be able to tell by the serial number?

 

[sickmacdoc]

Thanks for the reply.
Is there anyway that I can tell which type mine is. Will I be able to tell by the serial number?

If your title is correct and it is a 2.3Ghz G5 there are two ways to tell, both on the first page of info in your System Profiler (accessed by going to "About this Mac" under the Apple logo at the top left of your screen and clicking "More info...").

First if the Model Identifier lists PowerMac7,3 (and a little further down it lists number of cores as 2), you have the single processor dual core model that has PCI-X slots.

If the Model Identifier lists PowerMac11,2 and the cores are listed as 4 you have the later dual processor quad core model that has PCI-e slots.

 

[Bob Jovi]

First if the Model Identifier lists PowerMac7,3 (and a little further down it lists number of cores as 2), you have the single processor dual core model that has PCI-X slots.

If the Model Identifier lists PowerMac11,2 and the cores are listed as 4 you have the later dual processor quad core model that has PCI-e slots.

Yeah it is one of the later models as it is 2.3 dual core, so it has PCI-e slots then. Is there a PCI-e wireless card I can use then?

 

[amersault]

i got mine from here (and this was reconditioning an old Blue and White Rev1 G3):

MacWireless

based on your model, the 11g PCI card or the 11n PCI card might work for you.

installation is super simple and if you run into problems, they're pretty prompt w/ replying to you.

 

[Bob Jovi]

based on your model, the 11g PCI card or the 11n PCI card might work for you.

installation is super simple and if you run into problems, they're pretty prompt w/ replying to you.

I had a look and it seems like the PCI versions are not supported for dual core G5's, only the USB ones. Looks like I'll have to go USB then.

 

[velocityg4]

I had a look and it seems like the PCI versions are not supported for dual core G5's, only the USB ones. Looks like I'll have to go USB then.

Yes you will have to go USB. There are PCI-e wireless cards but they are much more expensive the PCI. I know of none that are officially Mac supported so you would have to check out the model number first. Further at any point the card maker could make a slight revision that would not get a new model number but be incompatible with the drivers.

Even if there are drivers you must make sure it is a PowerPC driver. As I have a DLink card that can work great on Intel Macs in Leopard but when I added the vendor and device id's to the Atheros kext file for a PPC Mac it did not work. Though the kext was listed as a Universal Binary it actually had no PPC support since Atheros drivers were made for the an Airport card revision that popped up in Intel iMacs.