so...im thinking of moving from mac back to pc!

portomar

right im just out and out pissed off at this stage. bought a mac pro recently, and was trying to install wireless on it, me like a fool thinking it would be easy.firstly, airport extreme card i bought isnt compatible, secondly, the install process is fidly and dangerous involving wires and screws coming out of your motherboard, im really worried that im gonna break somethin when i do it. thirdly, the card i need, an original airport card, doesnt seem to be available ANYWHERE, and that includes the apple website. fourthly, the only info i could find on installing an airport card came from a third party, just some punter who posted it on his blog. there is no instructions on how to install it on

1 the apple website

2 the manual my mac came with

3 the airport card itself (im told, they seem to be rarer than hens teeth)

WHY IS THIS SO HARD? my mac is about 2 months old, and i didnt have the option to buy it with my unit.

any help appreciated. im about ready to throw the thing out the window.

PhilipMarlowe

My guess is that it's not 'meant' to be installed by a customer, hence the lack of a manual?
http://support.apple.com/manuals/#macpro_diy

PhilipMarlowe

Re: the card available on the apple site:

This AirPort Extreme Card is not compatible with the Mac Pro or the Power Mac G5 Dual and Power Mac G5 Quad computers introduced in October 2005. To add an AirPort Extreme card to one of these systems, please contact an Apple Retail Store or other Authorized Apple Service Provider.

babypink

Posted via Mobile Device
ok..... Go to ebay and seach for airport PCI

You'll find a card that has a blue/black sticker on it thats says airport compatible. BUY THAT

Its cheap and it works. I just bought one for my powermac G5 and it worked 1st time. The card is broadcom based so it works with the apple airport drivers that an apple orig card uses.

I'll post an ebay link when I get to a computer.

Sad Professor

Also, can you get to an Apple service provider like Compub or Typtec? They'll be able to get the correct wifi card and install it for you. Look here:

http://www.apple.com/ie/buy/locator/

gerryk

portomar wrote: »

WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

Seems to me that you didn't research enough before jumping in.

440Hz

If you want to give your Mac Pro to me as a present I wont mind!

portomar

gerryk wrote: »

Seems to me that you didn't research enough before jumping in.

what are you basing that on gerry? my problem isnt that i bought the wrong card, the dude in the shop sold me the extreme card because he thought it was mac pro compatible, he gave me my money back. my problem is finding a card that does work.

portomar

babypink wrote: »

Posted via Mobile Device
ok..... Go to ebay and seach for airport PCI

You'll find a card that has a blue/black sticker on it thats says airport compatible. BUY THAT

Its cheap and it works. I just bought one for my powermac G5 and it worked 1st time. The card is broadcom based so it works with the apple airport drivers that an apple orig card uses.

I'll post an ebay link when I get to a computer.

thanks ill try that, will this work with a bog standard g wireless router (ie non apple?)

Sad Professor

This place would appear to sell the card you're looking for. They sell two versions: for 2008 models and pre-2008. Not sure how much the shipping is or what they're like to deal with. Also they're based in the U.S. so you might get stung for customs but it's another option.

Have you considered just getting a cheap router or wireless bridge and using that instead? Might be a lot less hassle.

dubmick

hold on a minute, did you buy a Mac Pro to try out Macs?

The cheapest one is €2.5k without a screen :eek:

Cabaal

dubmick wrote: »

hold on a minute, did you buy a Mac Pro to try out Macs?

The cheapest one is €2.5k without a screen :eek:

I'll swap my MacBook for the Mac Pro my MacBook already has wireless so your sorted...no more messing around for you

portomar

dubmick wrote: »

hold on a minute, did you buy a Mac Pro to try out Macs?

The cheapest one is €2.5k without a screen :eek:

no of course i didnt. im a video editor and have used macs extensively, this is my first one to own.

someone else asked about just getting a normal router, rather than an airport one,i have a regular router.ive been led to believe you can connect to any router with an airport card.

Sad Professor

portomar wrote: »

someone else asked about just getting a normal router, rather than an airport one,i have a regular router.ive been led to believe you can connect to any router with an airport card.

No, I meant using a router or eithernet bridge instead of an Airport card to connect to your existing router's network. In the case of a router I assume they would both have to support WDS or bridge/repeater mode. An Ethernet bridge might be simpler.

MarkoF

Also, Macwireless do an 11n USB wireless adapter at:

http://www.macwireless.com/

babypink

Posted via Mobile Device
yes the ebay one works with any router....I've used mine with linksys, netopia and buffalo

portomar

Sad Professor wrote: »

No, I meant using a router or eithernet bridge instead of an Airport card to connect to your existing router's network. In the case of a router I assume they would both have to support WDS or bridge/repeater mode. An Ethernet bridge might be simpler.

ah, so i can just buy this for example and link into my router that way?

Sad Professor

portomar wrote: »

ah, so i can just buy this for example and link into my router that way?

Yeah. I don't have much experience with them mind you so I'm not sure if there'd be any compatibility issues with macs. But I'd imagine most of them are configured via a web interface so it wouldn't be a problem.

Thumper Long

Its only available in eire from apple service partners, I had to buy one separately for my mac pro as the lead time on a cto machine was too long. If you get one off ebay drop me a pm and ill send you the relevant section from the service manual. its a doddle to fit.

babypink

as promised here is an ebay link

http://cgi.ebay.ie/AIRPORT-EXTREME-PCI-54M-WIFI-CARD-APPLE-POWERMAC-G3-G4_W0QQitemZ150260131059QQihZ005QQcategoryZ80034QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

spannerotoole

I am not a Mac Person. I'll say that here and now, some of you may consider me a 'troll' for my opinions based on my experience of the mac. The Wireless support in Mac is not very good, Apple take something that is open source (BSD) and turn it into a proprietary format, The BSD License lets you do this. Apple don't include support in the kernel for third party hardware and it appears certain apple hardware. They do everything so Proprietary that they make Microsoft look like saints (I'm not a windows person either)

You should make the move over to Linux. There is plenty of hardware support. All of my hardware on my laptop (which uses non standard parts) was detected on install. It is a 64 Bit OS and there are no problems with any of it. 64 Bit Drivers are available for all the hardware on this laptop. It also installs flawlessly on my other machines, and I believe it will install on a mac.

Try it out, What've you got to lose, all the software you need to do your job is available on Linux. I recommend OpenSuse 10.3 for new users. It's easy to use and Just Works

jaffa20

portomar wrote: »

right im just out and out pissed off at this stage. bought a mac pro recently, and was trying to install wireless on it, me like a fool thinking it would be easy.firstly, airport extreme card i bought isnt compatible, secondly, the install process is fidly and dangerous involving wires and screws coming out of your motherboard, im really worried that im gonna break somethin when i do it. thirdly, the card i need, an original airport card, doesnt seem to be available ANYWHERE, and that includes the apple website. fourthly, the only info i could find on installing an airport card came from a third party, just some punter who posted it on his blog. there is no instructions on how to install it on

1 the apple website

2 the manual my mac came with

3 the airport card itself (im told, they seem to be rarer than hens teeth)

WHY IS THIS SO HARD? my mac is about 2 months old, and i didnt have the option to buy it with my unit.

any help appreciated. im about ready to throw the thing out the window.

The guy i'm living with used to sell macs and says if you bought a mac pro in the last 2 months, it is impossible that it doesn't have wireless on it. If you're using eircom wireless that could be the problem it could be that cos i've heard people in general having problems with their wireless.

Red Alert

I use my MBP on over three wireless networks with different encryption types and have had no problem overall. I like playing with linux but to be honest the hassle factor and my iPod mean it's just not worth it as a day to day platform.

ethernet

spannerotoole wrote: »

I am not a Mac Person. I'll say that here and now, some of you may consider me a 'troll' for my opinions based on my experience of the mac. The Wireless support in Mac is not very good, Apple take something that is open source (BSD) and turn it into a proprietary format, The BSD License lets you do this. Apple don't include support in the kernel for third party hardware and it appears certain apple hardware. They do everything so Proprietary that they make Microsoft look like saints (I'm not a windows person either)

You should make the move over to Linux. There is plenty of hardware support. All of my hardware on my laptop (which uses non standard parts) was detected on install. It is a 64 Bit OS and there are no problems with any of it. 64 Bit Drivers are available for all the hardware on this laptop. It also installs flawlessly on my other machines, and I believe it will install on a mac.

Try it out, What've you got to lose, all the software you need to do your job is available on Linux. I recommend OpenSuse 10.3 for new users. It's easy to use and Just Works

I've used Linux too and I see where you're coming from. There's no need as such for great wireless support in Macs as only a handful of cards (chipsets) are supported in the kernel so it's not usually an issue unless someone naughty was to go and try to get OS X working on x86 hardware

Indeed, Apple have used open source to develop a proprietary product. I commend them for committing code back to Konqueror (the web browser in KDE).

Type 17

Sad Professor wrote: »

No, I meant using a router or eithernet bridge instead of an Airport card to connect to your existing router's network. In the case of a router I assume they would both have to support WDS or bridge/repeater mode. An Ethernet bridge might be simpler.

If you already use Airport Access Points, you could connect the Mac Pro through an Ethernet cable to a new Airport Express with 802.11N - it allows Ethernet clients (see extra tickbox in pic below), unlike the previous version.

ZENER

jaffa20 wrote: »

The guy i'm living with used to sell macs and says if you bought a mac pro in the last 2 months, it is impossible that it doesn't have wireless on it. If you're using eircom wireless that could be the problem it could be that cos i've heard people in general having problems with their wireless.

If you look at the configuration options in the Apple store you'll see the Airport card is optional. Given the price of a Mac Pro you would have thought a 50 quid wireless card would be standard. Big negative for Apple on that one I think.

As for Linux, which someone suggested earlier, I've tried several different distros of Linux over the past 5 or 6 years - Mandrake/Mandriva, RedHat/Fedora, Ubuntu, Xandros and several others. The biggest problem I came up against is support - or the lack of it.

I could link to several posts where I asked for help on an issue relating to these distros and hardware or driver problems and got 0 replies or a reply which assumed I had extensive knowledge of Linux. Overall I think learning about Linux is something everyone should try but to use it as anything other than an experiment isn't on yet. Getting a straight answer from someone is very difficult, that is if you manage to find someone able to answer.

Linux is terrific as a server, left alone to do a specific job - like an appliance - anything else will need to see a major improvement in the support structures.

ZEN

jaffa20

The guy i live with is definite that Wifi is standard on any mac. It's just called airport on the mac. He looked on the apple store and there is no mention of wifi being optional on a mac.

Type 17

jaffa20 wrote: »

The guy i live with is definite that Wifi is standard on any mac. It's just called airport on the mac. He looked on the apple store and there is no mention of wifi being optional on a mac.

Well the Mac Pro is different in many respects - here is the config option from the Apple store:

Breezer

jaffa20 wrote: »

The guy i live with is definite that Wifi is standard on any mac. It's just called airport on the mac. He looked on the apple store and there is no mention of wifi being optional on a mac.

See the attachment, taken from the 'configure' page for the Mac Pro. It's a bit ridiculous given the price alright.

EDIT: Damn it, beaten to it!

Type 17

Breezer wrote: »

EDIT: Damn it, beaten to it!

Ya snooze, ya lose

Seriously though, the only reason that I can think of that the Airport card wouldn't be standard is for security - security-conscious organisations may not want any non-wired interfaces (although having the card as optional but with the default setting as installed seems more sensible to me).

jaffa20

Humm, I'm the guy who used to sell Macs not Jaffa. I stand corrected.

The only advice I can offer is to buy a spurious product. Apple will rip you off big time for accessories but if you look around on the electronic shops on the web, you'll find what your looking for a lot cheaper. Theres an apple service agent off Camden Street and one in Blanch if you're stuck.

I love Apple gear but unfortunately the above is typical of them.