Wireless N help

[eyoungren]

So, you may have heard I picked up a Dlink DWA-131 Wireless N adapter for my A1013.

Of course, now I need a driver.

Part of my reason for going with this particular adapter was this thread.

But I didn't do my homework.

The first link in that thread no longer exists. I'm using the same adapter, but it's the Revision E. And Dlink doesn't seem to have a version for OS X 10.5 for Revision E.

I've tried Revision A, but the app that installs with the driver quits immediately. There does not seem to be any menubar icon either.

I tried again using kexts from the Revision E install (installed using Pacifist) but the app fails to load again.

The Ralink website also seems to have disappeared as well.

Last question. Right now I simply have Airport off. Am I actually supposed to disconnect the Airport card before this works? Or does it matter?

 

[B S Magnet]

So, you may have heard I picked up a Dlink DWA-131 Wireless N adapter for my A1013.

Of course, now I need a driver.

Part of my reason for going with this particular adapter was this thread.

But I didn't do my homework.

The first link in that thread no longer exists. I'm using the same adapter, but it's the Revision E. And Dlink doesn't seem to have a version for OS X 10.5 for Revision E.

I've tried Revision A, but the app that installs with the driver quits immediately. There does not seem to be any menubar icon either.

I tried again using kexts from the Revision E install (installed using Pacifist) but the app fails to load again.

The Ralink website also seems to have disappeared as well.

Last question. Right now I simply have Airport off. Am I actually supposed to disconnect the Airport card before this works? Or does it matter?

I tried some adjacent-digging for the downloads on that RealTek page and found this. Give it a try: https://ftp.csl-computer.com/pub/drivers/network/27343-CSL_NET_WLAN_USB2.0_STICK_150Mbit/

As for using third-party wifi adapters outside of AirPort, those settings will probably not make any difference to the state of your settings and drivers for the RT chipset adapter you have.

 

[AL1630]

I did some digging on the internet archive but all I was able to determine that rev. E came out in late 2016, but the driver download screen wouldn't load.

What's also weird is that their Australian site says Rev E only works on 10.7+ but they have a download for a 10.6 driver.

For your last question, I'm using an edimax wifi adapter and it doesn't require you to unplug anything. You just go into system preferences/Network then select it as the network adapter.

They seem to have a Rev B. driver for 10.5. Did you try that one or just Rev. A?

 

[sawpits]

So, you may have heard I picked up a Dlink DWA-131 Wireless N adapter for my A1013.

...

Last question. Right now I simply have Airport off. Am I actually supposed to disconnect the Airport card before this works? Or does it matter?

I believe that all you need to do is turn Airport off. Then do as the previous post by AL1630 indicates.

 

[eyoungren]

Well, thanks all for the suggestions but no dice on any of them. The kext files get installed, but I never see anything other than Airport in the config list in the Network pref pane.

One thing I did note is that when I plug in the device, Console tells me that USB cannot enumerate it.

Additionally, the Wireless utility app quits pretty much after I launch it. No crash report either.

The adapter was $12 so I'll probably just add it to my collection of WiFi USB devices that don't get used.

Unless someone has any other ideas?

 

[B S Magnet]

Well, thanks all for the suggestions but no dice on any of them. The kext files get installed, but I never see anything other than Airport in the config list in the Network pref pane.

One thing I did note is that when I plug in the device, Console tells me that USB cannot enumerate it.

Additionally, the Wireless utility app quits pretty much after I launch it. No crash report either.

The adapter was $12 so I'll probably just add it to my collection of WiFi USB devices that don't get used.

Unless someone has any other ideas?

I'll monitor this thread because it echoes a lot of the problems I kept running into with trying to make an 802.11ac USB adapter work on my iBook using software and kexts from the Realtek installer — namely the utility launching, then aborting, with a series of "autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking" lines in the Console.

This isn't the message you ran into, but overall it may point to the same code base Realtek used over several revisions until eventually just dropping support for 10.4 and 10.5. It may be an impossibly tall order, but the hope is we find a version which actually works for 10.4 and 10.5.

 

[Hrududu]

I can’t be much help on the issue at hand, but any particular reason you’re going with a USB device instead of a PC Card? I got a few Linksys WPC600N cards that work flawlessly in my TiBooks (Leopard thinks it’s a stock AirPort Extreme card) and the range/speed is great.

 

[weckart]

The A1013 only has USB 1.x ports, which will squash the speed of the DWA-131 right down to 802.11b speeds or are you trying this in the USB 2.0 adapter, which is in the cardbus slot? That might need powering up if you put a WiFi dongle in. There is enough juice from the Cardbus slot to support one USB pendrive but anything else tends to need to be self-powered or you have to power the USB adapter card up.

 

[eyoungren]

I can’t be much help on the issue at hand, but any particular reason you’re going with a USB device instead of a PC Card? I got a few Linksys WPC600N cards that work flawlessly in my TiBooks (Leopard thinks it’s a stock AirPort Extreme card) and the range/speed is great.

The A1013 only has USB 1.x ports, which will squash the speed of the DWA-131 right down to 802.11b speeds or are you trying this in the USB 2.0 adapter, which is in the cardbus slot? That might need powering up if you put a WiFi dongle in. There is enough juice from the Cardbus slot to support one USB pendrive but anything else tends to need to be self-powered or you have to power the USB adapter card up.

I have a dual USB 2.0 PC card in the PC slot, which is why I am not using a PC card.

@Weckert, I've tried in both the card slots and the actual native ports. Either way, the system sees the adapter, it just isn't talking to it.

 

[weckart]

@Weckert, I've tried in both the card slots and the actual native ports. Either way, the system sees the adapter, it just isn't talking to it.

My guess is that although some adapters claim to have support from 10.4+, what they are not stating is that this is probably Intel only. There is a way of checking the driver using the file command and Terminal to see whether the kext has been compiled for PPC but first you need to track down the Tiger/Leopard driver for that particular Realtek chipset.

 

[eyoungren]

OK.

We moved to a new home in April 2018. I have been in the process of cleaning up the absolute mess that is the garage (still a long ways to go). Part of today's work had me run across an old Wireless N USB adapter that a user here sent me for my G4. There is another smaller one outside somewhere, but I will take what I can get.

An Internet Wayback Machine search yielded a driver through the manufactuer of the device for 10.5. The chip is a Ralink RT3070. So, this old PowerBook G4 is now using 802.11n. Just means I got to be careful moving around in the chair though.

Speed in T4Fx is noticeably faster, as is the home network. This means my bottleneck is the Airport Extreme card.

I also do not know why I was expecting 5Ghz, but this device is apparently not capable of that. 2.4Ghz channel only.

EDIT: Added the adapter to a USB extension cable.

 

[weckart]

This stick probably predated 5GHz. Even now, there are few cheap sticks that only do 2.4Ghz. I remember using a Ralink stick on a Hackintosh back in the day. Someone on Insanelymac or possibly also here worked out how to dispense with the helper application and get Apple's internal AirPort software to support the stick. Dunno if that can be retrofitted to PPC but it makes for a neater solution as I always had issues with the helper application sometimes not correctly starting up the hardware so that no signals were detected, even on a real Mac.

 

[eyoungren]

This stick probably predated 5GHz. Even now, there are few cheap sticks that only do 2.4Ghz. I remember using a Ralink stick on a Hackintosh back in the day. Someone on Insanelymac or possibly also here worked out how to dispense with the helper application and get Apple's internal AirPort software to support the stick. Dunno if that can be retrofitted to PPC but it makes for a neater solution as I always had issues with the helper application sometimes not correctly starting up the hardware so that no signals were detected, even on a real Mac.

I have rediscovered the issues I had with this device back with my G4. It would appear that if the device is disconnected the profile you set in the Wireless Utility that has the WiFi password does not fully connect. You get a signal, but a Self-Assigned IP address.

If you re-enter the password to connect back to the WiFi it works again. So, essentially every time you disconnect you have to re-enter the WiFi password.

If you close the Wireless Utility app you shut off the wireless.

Not something I wanted to be bothered with on my G4. However, for this laptop I'm willing to eat it a bit (at this time). Once you're connected it seems to be solid.

Hoping I can find my other device soon. Bit smaller, but don't know if it's 5Ghz or not.

 

[bobesch]

I have rediscovered the issues I had with this device back with my G4. It would appear that if the device is disconnected the profile you set in the Wireless Utility that has the WiFi password does not fully connect. You get a signal, but a Self-Assigned IP address.

If you re-enter the password to connect back to the WiFi it works again. So, essentially every time you disconnect you have to re-enter the WiFi password.

If you close the Wireless Utility app you shut off the wireless.

Not something I wanted to be bothered with on my G4. However, for this laptop I'm willing to eat it a bit (at this time). Once you're connected it seems to be solid.

Hoping I can find my other device soon. Bit smaller, but don't know if it's 5Ghz or not.

You should give the Edimax mini USB-stick a try. It's wireless utility connects neatless automatically in the background and runs without any hickups.
But maybe only the USB2.0-PCExpressCard causes a problem, if the MBP enters sleeping-mode and disconnects the USB-Wifi-stick in an odd way ... (this happens with my USB3.0-card on my A1260. I always use "Caffeine" to avoid sleeping-mode whenever I run USB-backups to external-drives through that specific USB3-PCExpressCare.)

 

[B S Magnet]

I have rediscovered the issues I had with this device back with my G4. It would appear that if the device is disconnected the profile you set in the Wireless Utility that has the WiFi password does not fully connect. You get a signal, but a Self-Assigned IP address.

If you re-enter the password to connect back to the WiFi it works again. So, essentially every time you disconnect you have to re-enter the WiFi password.

If you close the Wireless Utility app you shut off the wireless.

Not something I wanted to be bothered with on my G4. However, for this laptop I'm willing to eat it a bit (at this time). Once you're connected it seems to be solid.

Hoping I can find my other device soon. Bit smaller, but don't know if it's 5Ghz or not.

I use the same RAlink wireless utility front-end for my Edimax PCI 802.11n wifi card. Does this dropping/self-IP occur even when the wifi router is configured to DHCP server duty and assigning fixed IPs for each of your devices?

 

[eyoungren]

I use the same RAlink wireless utility front-end for my Edimax PCI 802.11n wifi card. Does this dropping/self-IP occur even when the wifi router is configured to DHCP server duty and assigning fixed IPs for each of your devices?

It's happening because the utility is not entirely connecting to the network. And that seems to be down to something strange happening in the profile (which retains the network password).

I get full connection if I re-enter the password manually (after a disconnect). But that kind of defeats the purpose of automatically reconnecting.

 

[B S Magnet]

It's happening because the utility is not entirely connecting to the network. And that seems to be down to something strange happening in the profile (which retains the network password).

I get full connection if I re-enter the password manually (after a disconnect). But that kind of defeats the purpose of automatically reconnecting.

Huh. That's quizzical. I got nothin’.

 

[emendelson]

I hope it's OK to revive an ancient thread. I have a TiBook A001 running Tiger, but it doesn't recognize the LinkSys WPC600N card. Is this is a bad card, or do I need to have a machine running Leopard to use it?

 

[B S Magnet]

I hope it's OK to revive an ancient thread. I have a TiBook A001 running Tiger, but it doesn't recognize the LinkSys WPC600N card. Is this is a bad card, or do I need to have a machine running Leopard to use it?

Yah, you will need Leopard running on it, since the kexts (drivers) for that series of Broadcom wifi cards appeared in Leopard.

Even though the A1001s were under the 867MHz soft limit Apple imposed would ordinary prevent Leopard from installing on your model, it can be overridden. I used to do this with my old PBG4 400MHz. Plus, there are ways to optimize that install, once in place, to make Leopard a bit lighter on these older systems.

Once you have Leopard 10.5.8 on there, you should be able to have the system register and recognize the card. Cheers.

 

[emendelson]

Thank you for that. I was thinking of installing Leopard on that machine, and will now go ahead and do it. Thanks again!