Cheapest way to add Bluetooth to an old PPC Mac

[Jethryn Freyman]

So, I have a Power Mac G5 without Bluetooth, but I really like Bluetooth, and was considering picking up one of Apple's Bluetooth cards for it on eBay. Problem is, I'm a poor student, and those cards on eBay go for about $14 + another $14 for postage, and I'm not really in the mood to pay for that at the moment.

However, I did find a tiny cheap USB Bluetooth dongle lying around my place, one that came with a cheap PC I'd picked up. Curious, I stuck it into my Mac (or rather, the USB hub in my monitor connected to my Mac), and lo and behold, it worked.

System Profiler recognised my device as a Cambridge Silicion Radio device running firmware version 3164. I tested it with my Nokia phone and it works! The dongle itself claims to be Bluetooth 2.0 with a 3mbit/sec data speed.

It looks very similar this:

which you can find selling on eBay for $1.25 with free international postage. I don't know if these ones on eBay would have the same chipset in them as the one I have, but I think it's likely.

Just thought I'd post this up in case it helps anybody else get some cheap Bluetooth action. It's nice to know that Leopard supports cheap generic BT dongles

 

[makinao]

The wifi card on my iBook g4 died, so I got this wifi dongle similar to your bluetooth one. The driver is came with was for windows, but I managed to hunt down drivers for OS X. Works fine. The signal strength is about the same as my macbook. Its so small that I don't have to take it out when I put the iBook in its case. Costs about $8 in my country.

The same store has a bluetooth dongle similar to yours for about $3.