Mac Pro Airport Extreme

[yochiar1]

Me again. What has been people's experience with getting wireless coverage with their Mac Pro. I bought a first gen Intel 2.66ghz Xeon and installed an airport extreme card. The installation was painless, but then I spent the next two days trying unsuccessfully to get it to connect to my base station. The card was transmitting but refused to connect to my Airport base station. I contacted the card manufacturer and tried everything. I disconnected and reconnected the wires. Tried just about every antennae arrangement and no luck. I also installed blue tooth at the same time and had no problems.

I have since sold the machine. Not having wireless internet was frustrating but I liked everything else about the Mac Pro, especially the ease of upgrading relative to my iMac.

I am considering buying a one year old or newer Mac Pro with a pre-installed airport card. Will it have the same issues or are the newer machines better than the older (2006) machines.

 

[DualShock]

It was mentioned a few times here that the AirPort card wires in Mac Pro's are mislabeled, causing reception issues. But I'm not sure if this is a universal fact for all Mac Pro's, because mine works fine (see below). See this link in the MacRumors guides: http://guides.macrumors.com/Adding_Bluetooth_and_Wireless_to_a_Mac_Pro

I use my 2008 with an ethernet cable, but it works fine when I turn on wireless. But I'm not really sure about the range because my Mac Pro sits 5 feet from my AirPort Extreme.

One other thing, if you're buying a refurb 2009 Mac Pro (based on your other thread), it may not come with an AirPort card, since you can't get refurbs built to order. But on occasion, refurb Macs come with more than the specs listed on the site, though that's very YMMV. IIRC 2010 Mac Pro's come with an AirPort card already.