Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Low Cost Wifi For PPC

Dronecatcher

Dronecatcher

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jun 17, 2014
5,278
7,940
Lincolnshire, UK
Just wanted to make everyone aware of these cheap USB wireless dongles, as if you're like me, getting USB wireless adaptors is either expensive or hit and miss. This is a Europe only auction but I'm sure they have similar in the States:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130754121067?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

The drivers it comes with don't work for PPC - however, after some detective work, I found drivers for PPC Tiger onwards here:

http://www.edimax.com/en/support_detail.php?pd_id=347&pl1_id=24&pl2_id=84

Also for reference, under a few live linux distros I've tried they're plug and play.
 
Eh, Ralink. I had nothing but trouble with those. Fine for Windows, Linux and the Raspberry Pi but dropouts galore on OSX.
 
weckart said:
Eh, Ralink. I had nothing but trouble with those. Fine for Windows, Linux and the Raspberry Pi but dropouts galore on OSX.
Click to expand...


In the past, their wireless utilities have been atrocious but this latest update is more professional. Drop outs or not £3.75 is more bearable than the last "Mac OS X Compatible" USB dongle I bought for £29.95 :)
 
Altemose said:
I highly recommend the Netgear WNA1000M adapter as it is small, wireless N, and nice looking!
Click to expand...

Can you do internet sharing with one of these? My original airport card bit the dust and I used to use Airport to share an ethernet connection with other computers in my house (we've got DSL; I'm too cheap to spring for whole-house wireless until Google Fiber comes to my neighborhood later this year [I'm on the Kansas side of Kansas City]).
 
vlark said:
Can you do internet sharing with one of these? My original airport card bit the dust and I used to use Airport to share an ethernet connection with other computers in my house (we've got DSL; I'm too cheap to spring for whole-house wireless until Google Fiber comes to my neighborhood later this year [I'm on the Kansas side of Kansas City]).
Click to expand...

You can use Internet Sharing with any network device in OS X to my knowledge.
 
Dronecatcher said:
In the past, their wireless utilities have been atrocious but this latest update is more professional. Drop outs or not £3.75 is more bearable than the last "Mac OS X Compatible" USB dongle I bought for £29.95 :)
Click to expand...

It really wasn't. It could not hold a connection for a minute and you had to pull out the dongle to reset. I would rather cough up the £30 quite frankly.
 
vlark said:
Can you do internet sharing with one of these? My original airport card bit the dust and I used to use Airport to share an ethernet connection with other computers in my house (we've got DSL; I'm too cheap to spring for whole-house wireless until Google Fiber comes to my neighborhood later this year [I'm on the Kansas side of Kansas City]).
Click to expand...

Ooh google fiber you would really like that! Free internet, or 1000Mbit/s for $70/mo! That's 125 Mbyte/s, faster than a hard drive! Imagine booting your computer... from the cloud!
Haha when fiber optic goes everywhere then the data centers would probably be overloaded hehe until optical computing becomes reality. :D
 
Altemose said:
You can use Internet Sharing with any network device in OS X to my knowledge.
Click to expand...

I've never been able to get it to work with a Tenda W311U and the Ralink drivers it uses. Sharing from the Internet port to the "ethernet" port created by the Ralink driver never works.

----------
poiihy said:
Ooh google fiber you would really like that! Free internet, or 1000Mbit/s for $70/mo! That's 125 Mbyte/s, faster than a hard drive! Imagine booting your computer... from the cloud!
Haha when fiber optic goes everywhere then the data centers would probably be overloaded hehe until optical computing becomes reality. :D
Click to expand...

It's already here in some neighborhoods, but my city (Overland Park, KS) dicked around trying to negotiate with Google and when Google threatened to walk away (and it did in neighboring la-te-da Leawood), the bigwigs at all the Fortune 500 company offices in town threw a hissy fit and the city council finally approved the deal to give Google utility leeway access and allow them to string new fiber on utility poles.

I should be able to sign up for it by summer.
 
vlark said:
I've never been able to get it to work with a Tenda W311U and the Ralink drivers it uses. Sharing from the Internet port to the "ethernet" port created by the Ralink driver never works.
Click to expand...

I always went from one of the third party wireless adapters to the built in Ethernet port without issues. I am sure some exceptions apply.
 
vlark said:
Sharing from the Internet port to the "ethernet" port created by the Ralink driver never works.
Click to expand...

Maybe this is the problem. You share from the physical ethernet port in your computer not from some phantom port that the software creates.
 
weckart said:
Maybe this is the problem. You share from the physical ethernet port in your computer not from some phantom port that the software creates.
Click to expand...

No, no. I'm sharing FROM the physical port TO the dongle -- the dongle software creates a port named "Ethernet 2" or some such.

I've never been able to share from an Ethernet port to a dongle, no matter which dongle or driver I try.

I used to use internet sharing via Airport all the time, but then the card went bad (the system can recognize the card, but the card can't recognize any networks, if it's right next to a router or another Mac that is sharing it's internet connection).

Sorry -- I didn't mean to hijack the thread.
 
vlark said:
No, no. I'm sharing FROM the physical port TO the dongle -- the dongle software creates a port named "Ethernet 2" or some such.

I've never been able to share from an Ethernet port to a dongle, no matter which dongle or driver I try.

I used to use internet sharing via Airport all the time, but then the card went bad (the system can recognize the card, but the card can't recognize any networks, if it's right next to a router or another Mac that is sharing it's internet connection).

Sorry -- I didn't mean to hijack the thread.
Click to expand...

You can go from third party wireless adapter to built in Ethernet or built in Ethernet to AirPort. Unless a third party adapter has native support (viewed as AirPort) then it will not work.
 
If you have an older android device or can get one for pretty cheap, you can run EasyTether on it and hook it up to your Mac over USB. Connect the Android device to your wifi network and it runs as a wireless card. There's a free trial on the Play Store to see if it works for you.
I use it and it works pretty well, every week or so the app needs to close or the phone is messing up, but it works.

http://www.mobile-stream.com/easytether/android.html

EDIT: Also works with older Blackberries running 4+.
 
Last edited:
weckart said:
Eh, Ralink. I had nothing but trouble with those. Fine for Windows, Linux and the Raspberry Pi but dropouts galore on OSX.
Click to expand...

I never have a problem with Ralink. My Linksys WMP54G Wireless PCI card uses the RT61 chip and worked flawlessly on OS X.

The Long-Range USB Wifi antenna I use for my main source of Internet is a Ralink RT2870 chip. Although Ralink HAS no PPC compatible drivers on their site i did hunt down RT2870 driver that DOES work on PPC 10.3 and up and it works flawlessly.
 
Altemose said:
You can go from third party wireless adapter to built in Ethernet or built in Ethernet to AirPort. Unless a third party adapter has native support (viewed as AirPort) then it will not work.
Click to expand...

Well, there's my problem, then.

I fixed it all this weekend anyway. I was a local Savers (a chain thriftstore) that had a Netgear WNR2000v3 wireless router for $7. On impulse, I bought it. I connected it between my DSL Router and my iMac, updated the router to the latest firmware, and now I have a whole-house wireless access (albeit in a dinky DSL modem for now). The iMac with the flaky Airport card is still on Ethernet, but now my daughter's iPad and my computers in the basement can connect to the wireless router rather than have to do internet sharing via Airport.

Man, it's 2015 and I just updated to 2009-era tech!

----------
MatthewLTL said:
I never have a problem with Ralink. My Linksys WMP54G Wireless PCI card uses the RT61 chip and worked flawlessly on OS X.

The Long-Range USB Wifi antenna I use for my main source of Internet is a Ralink RT2870 chip. Although Ralink HAS no PPC compatible drivers on their site i did hunt down RT2870 driver that DOES work on PPC 10.3 and up and it works flawlessly.
Click to expand...

I found solid drivers here:

http://www.mediatek.com/en/downloads/

Mediatek bough Ralink at some point in the past few years.
 
vlark said:
Well, there's my problem, then.

I fixed it all this weekend anyway. I was a local Savers (a chain thriftstore) that had a Netgear WNR2000v3 wireless router for $7. On impulse, I bought it. I connected it between my DSL Router and my iMac, updated the router to the latest firmware, and now I have a whole-house wireless access (albeit in a dinky DSL modem for now). The iMac with the flaky Airport card is still on Ethernet, but now my daughter's iPad and my computers in the basement can connect to the wireless router rather than have to do internet sharing via Airport.

Man, it's 2015 and I just updated to 2009-era tech!

----------



I found solid drivers here:

http://www.mediatek.com/en/downloads/

Mediatek bough Ralink at some point in the past few years.
Click to expand...

and so you use eary 2000s tech in the mid 2010s LOL

i know mediatek is what ive been on for drivers
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back