iBook G4 12" Airport Info not found

[Willaay]

Hey all,
I bought an iBook G4 from my friend for $10. It needed a new inverter board, reed switch, and battery. I've replaced them all successfully, and the computer works great!

Only problem is, the airport information can't be found. I know its in there because I've disconnected it, reconnected it, reseated it, and it worked before.

I can open system profiler, and when I click airport card, it says no information found.

I'm on the internet via an ethernet cable, and its a pain in the butt! Anyone have any suggestions on what to do? Should I go ahead and order a new card?

 

[noodle654]

Hey all,
I bought an iBook G4 from my friend for $10. It needed a new inverter board, reed switch, and battery. I've replaced them all successfully, and the computer works great!

Only problem is, the airport information can't be found. I know its in there because I've disconnected it, reconnected it, reseated it, and it worked before.

I can open system profiler, and when I click airport card, it says no information found.

I'm on the internet via an ethernet cable, and its a pain in the butt! Anyone have any suggestions on what to do? Should I go ahead and order a new card?

I'm thinking that the card might be the problem. If it is a G4 it would have Airport Extreme. I would run AppleHardware Test, it tests the Airport card.

 

[Willaay]

I don't have any of the original CD's, and the CD drive is messed up.

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

You may be able to download the drivers/software from support.apple.com

As for the physical aspect, are you sure you've got the card in all the way? On my G4 iBook it needed quite a good push to get it in straight and fully seated.

 

[Willaay]

Yeah its in. I ordered a new one, just to see. It was only $18. Thanks eBay.

 

[4JNA]

trying another card, espically for $18 is a really good idea. i fix/support lots of ibooks, and another thought is that the socket that the card snaps into is broken. it is a tall stand-off that is soldered on the logic board, and i've seen several that get enough use (plug/unplug/plug, etc) that they finally break a trace or two and the card is no longer seen or functional. no easy fix unless you can handle surface mount/solder trace repair. if that is the case, get a cheap usb wifi dongle and that would get you back to work for $20-30 depending on where you find one.

the other thing i would mention is that you can download the hardware test cd images from apple. with a messed up drive, you will need an external to burn the image to cd, and then boot the laptop from the cd (PPC note: it MUST be a firewire external drive to be bootable). link is HERE. best of luck.

 

[Willaay]

Thanks for the help! I'll let you know how it goes.