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Does size really matter? ....... re an Airport card.

O

*old-guy*

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 22, 2007
161
0
Blackburn in North West England
This is all about the two Macs in my sig.
The Pismo came with an airport card already installed by the previous owner. One side just has "Airport" in big letters and the normal wi-fi symbol. The other side has loads of numbers, notably a serial number and an Airport ID.
The eMac has NO Airport card installed although, under the airport cover inside the CD tray there is the end of the Airport ariel.
The snag is that my Airport card doesn't seem to want to fit in the slot in the eMac. The Airport card seems to be too big from side to side.
Does that sound logical?
Are different models of Airport card made in different sizes.
Does anyone know for sure which model I need to buy?

And for your bonus question ..... Is there a way to alter the location settings of a keyboard? This NON-Mac keyboard I am using has all the keys in the right place but, for instance, hitting the @ gives me a " and the same the other way round. Can this be fixed until I can get a shiny white Mac keyboard?
Cheers,
Steve
 
The Pismo most likely has the original 802.11B card in it. There is a rightside up/upside down to plugging in an AirPort card, but most likely the eMac is one of the later models and takes the updated B/G card. Apple was nice enough not to make them compatible with each other, so a certain Mac can ONLY take the B card or ONLY take the G card (up to the Intels and PowerMac G5's to now, which have special cards themselves).

One of the greatest little apps for this kind of purpose (its easy to get mixed info from the web about this sort of thing, even when visiting an Apple Store because anything more than 2 years old is foreign to them) is "MacTracker". I would check mine but I'm at work and don't have access to it. It has every Mac model and every bit of info about each one in it and you'll be able to see which eMac (those differed by CPU speed and ultimately USB 2.0) you have and what it takes. Also, its 100% free. (macupdate.com or versiontracker.com)
 
OK, it seems that there are 3 basic flavours of eMac.
1 ... eMac.
2 ... eMac. (ATI graphics)
3 ... eMac. (1.0 GHz G4)

I think I can discount option 3 because this eMac only has 800MHz so it's either option 1 or option 2.
Under "About this Mac" >> More info >> PCI/AGP cards there is this info .....

Type: display
Bus: AGP
VRAM (Total): 32 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x5157
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-xxxxx-116

Option 1 seems to be nVidia so I'm going to plump for option 2 as being my particular eMac and option 2 means I need an Airport Extreme card.

Does that sound about right to all you Mac experts?
Cheers,
Steve
 
I would say yes as you have also tried the Pismo's airport card and it did not fit. That's also a plus because an Extreme card retails at $49 and an original Airport card can go anywhere from $99-150 for a "new" one. You could double check the MT app to see what the first eMac model had in terms of a graphics card to reinforce your purchase decision. (Which on second viewing, looks like you did.) Go for it!

PS: Good job checking out your System Profiler!
 
OK, NOW I'm fairly sure my eMac is a eMac (ATI Graphics)
I took my eMac's serial number and from that got my Configuration code of P9G. This code refers to an eMac of the ATI flavour as opposed to the other 2 versions. The ATI version needs an Airport Extreme card so that's probably why the Airport card didn't fit, lol
Thanks, guys.
 
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