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Imac G3 and wireless internet

comda

comda

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 15, 2011
619
85
Greetings MacRumors,

As ive been posting in previous posts i have finally upgraded my old tangerine IMac G3 and its running as well as it can! I gave the thing a blistering 80Gb Hard drive, 1GB of Ram, installed Tiger and it runs smooth. its a 400MHz Tangerine slot loader with a DVD rom and the original 012331/A Airport card.

A few years back i tried getting this wireless card to work when i was under Jaguar and it refused to connect to my n signal WPA2 netgear router. It did connect when i set the router to WEP. Now under Tiger i figured it would have newer software and shouldnt have an issue connecting but it still refuses to.

IS there anyway to get this card to still connect to the router or is it way past its time?
 
The Airport B card can only connect to a maximum encryption level of WPA-TPIK. It cannot connect to WPA2 or WPA-AES networks.
 
Intell said:
It would get about the same speeds as WiFi B.
Click to expand...

Are there any specific adapters to look for that are plug and play at least under OS X? I have PCI cards for my G4 towers and PCMIA cards for my Powerbooks, but would appreciate adapters for things like my iMac G3, Cube, and iBook G3.
 
jbarley said:
How well would that work with the G3's USB 1.1 ports?
Click to expand...

While limited to USB 1.1 which is about wireless B speeds, you can connect to modern WPA2 and not risk network security to use these older Macs. Do you have an older wireless router around? I used an old Linksys WRT54G to make a client bridge. Essentially, it connects to my AirPort Extreme and allows the LAN ports to be used for devices without Wi-Fi.
 
jbarley said:
How well would that work with the G3's USB 1.1 ports?
Click to expand...

USB 1.1 gets speeds of up to 12Mbit/s which is fine for internet, but usually you never get those speeds because of overhead and whatever. The real world speeds would probably be around 6 or 8Mbit/s.
 
poiihy said:
USB 1.1 gets speeds of up to 12Mbit/s which is fine for internet, but usually you never get those speeds because of overhead and whatever. The real world speeds would probably be around 6 or 8Mbit/s.
Click to expand...

Asking this will benefit the OP and I, but what USB wi-fi adapters will work. I would like to stick one in my G5 and/or eMac, however any of the ones I tried only seem to be windows only and they don't show up. Is there a way to get them to work or do I need a specific Mac-one
 
Gamer9430 said:
Asking this will benefit the OP and I, but what USB wi-fi adapters will work. I would like to stick one in my G5 and/or eMac, however any of the ones I tried only seem to be windows only and they don't show up. Is there a way to get them to work or do I need a specific Mac-one
Click to expand...

I use the Netgear WNA1000M USB adapter for wireless and a Rocketfish Micro Bluetooth USB adapter for Bluetooth connectivity.
 
Intell said:
The Airport B card can only connect to a maximum encryption level of WPA-TPIK. It cannot connect to WPA2 or WPA-AES networks.
Click to expand...

Thanks. This is what i wanted to know. I've been using my Imac A little more since the Tiger and its big hardware upgrade a few weeks ago. Its only about once a week i fire it up but its still annoying to wire up an Ethernet cable to it from my macbook to get some what of an internet connection.

Thanks to many others who suggested Wireless adapters but we all know 400MHz its a little slow, so im not planning on spending a dime on this old timer. Ive spent hours in labour already. Its running fine. besides i Do have my old N router from Linksys. Perhaps i wire it in and set it to WEP.
 
Gamer9430 said:
Asking this will benefit the OP and I, but what USB wi-fi adapters will work. I would like to stick one in my G5 and/or eMac, however any of the ones I tried only seem to be windows only and they don't show up. Is there a way to get them to work or do I need a specific Mac-one
Click to expand...

i bought a netis 2120 Nano Wireless N 150Mbps USB adaptor for my mac. It works on Tiger all the way up to 10.9
 
There are hacks around to use a cardbus wireless in a internal airport slot which allow modern security. The iMac would be a good candidate with the room inside, IIRC.
 
The internal Airport slot only works with WiFi B cards. It does not work with any G Airport clone card.
 
Thanks again guys. I sadly realize this machine without CPU and video upgrades will never again match a modern say i5 system. But i still love using it for the itunes, DVD player (I GOT THE DVD drive model YAAY) and an occasional OS9 game. Although not to be rude i am putting together a classic windows gaming Pc.

Thanks again for all the help!
 
comda said:
Thanks again guys. I sadly realize this machine without CPU and video upgrades will never again match a modern say i5 system. But i still love using it for the itunes, DVD player (I GOT THE DVD drive model YAAY) and an occasional OS9 game. Although not to be rude i am putting together a classic windows gaming Pc.

Thanks again for all the help!
Click to expand...

If you want a truly usable daily PowerPC system then I recommend that you look at 1.33 GHz+ iBooks and PowerBooks as well as PowerMac G5s.
 
Intell said:
The internal Airport slot only works with WiFi B cards. It does not work with any G Airport clone card.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, it has been a few years since I researched this. Now I remember this hack came about when Apple discontinued the original cards and they became scarce and expensive. I did find a Belkin 54G card to get a Pismo online, but that was in the cardbus slot.
 
catzilla said:
Ahhh, it has been a few years since I researched this. Now I remember this hack came about when Apple discontinued the original cards and they became scarce and expensive. I did find a Belkin 54G card to get a Pismo online, but that was in the cardbus slot.
Click to expand...

I still do that in my Pismo and my TiBook so that I can connect to modern networks.

As you said, though, it goes in the standard PCMIA slot and not in the Airport slot.
 
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catzilla said:
There are hacks around to use a cardbus wireless in a internal airport slot which allow modern security. The iMac would be a good candidate with the room inside, IIRC.
Click to expand...

Wait so i can hack the original card thats there to work then? im a little confused.
 
even with wireless B i cannot connect to my wireless N WPA2 network? Sorry not that familiar with networks lol
 
Alternatively you could probably set up a second wireless network in your router config using a lower encryption setting like wpa and only whitelist the address of your imac g3 so only it would be able to connect.
 
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