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G5 Airport extreme card wireless problem..

J

jay2k6ie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 26, 2009
12
0
I have an old G5 power pc running Leopard. I have wireless access in my house so I decided to buy an airport extreme card to access it from my bedroom.

I soon found out I needed an antenna to pickup the network after installing the extreme card. I checked out the apple T antenna which even second hand is stupidly expensive for what it is so I went and bought an SMA connector for the wireless antenna port and seperately bought a 7dBi 2.4Ghz antenna with an SMA connection.

I have since installed the antenna but I am still not picking up any wireless networks..? I have a pc laptop in the same room and I have no problem picking up my network.

Im totally out of ideas now I dont know what im supposed to do. Is there something simple im not doing here. Is there an installation process I need to go through with an airport utility? I didnt think there would be I thought it was pretty much plug and play.

The extreme card definitly works because I moved the G5 right beside the router downstairs and I could pickup the wireless network (this was without an antenna also)

Thanks for the help!

Edit: Ive tried connecting by going to 'join other network' and inputting the network name and password myself but I keep getting 'connection timeout' aftera few seconds?
 
Airport Extreme wireless connection problems

I'm in the same boat, just installed my Airport Extreme card on 2004 iMac G5 running 10.4.11 but it can't see my Sky Netgear router from next door whereas my pc laptop sees it wherever it is in the house. My Airport icon is greyed out, I've tried inputting various network names, passwords etc but no joy. Pulling my hair out, can anyone assist?
 
The only situation I've ever seen in which an Airport Extreme card was recognized by the Mac, but could not find any wireless networks was due to a bad airport extreme card. Does it see ANY networks at all? You may just have a bad card. They are from 2003-2004.
 
quantum003 said:
The only situation I've ever seen in which an Airport Extreme card was recognized by the Mac, but could not find any wireless networks was due to a bad airport extreme card. Does it see ANY networks at all? You may just have a bad card. They are from 2003-2004.
Click to expand...

It sees my airport express which is beside it and when I temporarily moved it to beside my router it picked that up too.. Its occasionally picking up my wireless network from my bedroom but when I try connect and enter the password its says 'connecting to network' and then ends up saying 'connection timeout'..!?
 
Oh yeah... this reminds me of an issue I saw come up once. Apparently some G5's were shipped with their bluetooth antennas and airport antennas switched. I'm not 100% of the details so let me do a quick search and see if I can find the article I remember reading.
 
Try removing your side panel. That will boost your wireless signal as the aluminum case kills any wireless frequencies. I also used a safety pin once as my antenna and worked amazing well.
 
works, but very weak signal

Thanks OrangeSVTguy, I have removed the side panel, and I got signal straight away. However the signal is still very weak compared to my powerbook G4 laptop, any tricks to make the signal stronger?
 
ponyo said:
Thanks OrangeSVTguy, I have removed the side panel, and I got signal straight away. However the signal is still very weak compared to my powerbook G4 laptop, any tricks to make the signal stronger?
Click to expand...

Try inserting an opened safety pin into the external Airport antenna hole. Worked good for me.
 
There used to be a Dr. Bott airport antenna extender they made for the earlier G5 Powermacs. Worked great. Anyone with the last revision powermac, though, gets great reception because Apple built airport antennas into the case.
 
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