Be Excellent To Each Other

I've given my parents an old G4 mac* and monitor. They already have a wireless router from when my sister was at home but the mac has no wifi. It's also going to be set up miles away from the phone socket, and no, they don't want cables trailing up the stairs.

So should I get a pricey airport card £30-35 or is there a cheaper USB-plug-me-do that anyone can recommend?

Ta.



*It's a G4 450mhz (I think) running 10.4.

I got a USB dongle for about £10 from eBuyer. It works okay - distance seems reasonable (but then it's quite close to the router).

Thanks Grim... yeah I've had a look at a few dongles but just wondered if anyone can recommend one they use thats hassle free and Mac compatible.

The mac wifi cards are notoriously shit if you're more than a room or two away from the router - my iMac which sits in my office can't get a signal at all from the router, and my MBP struggles as well.

Not had a problem with either my Macbook Pro or the Airport Extreme Card I installed in my Mrs iBook. Both connect flawlessly from the lounge (on the ground floor) to the router in the loft. That's why I'll buy another for my folks unless someone can rec-me-do a cheaper alternative.

Do you live in a castle Mr Snappa?

Oh, my laptop always connects fine due to the screen enclosure effectively being a big antenna, but it's noticeable weaker in this particular room which is at the opposite end of the house to the router. However, the internal cards for desktops are notoriously shit at picking up signals due to having no antenna to speak of and I've seen numerous people moaning of such over at UCSM on usenet. Obviously, it will vary from house to house - mine's an old Victorian house with several thick brick walls between me and the router and I wonder whether the natural static charge held in the chimney stack next to the mac could interfere?

Ok yeah, fair point there. The usb dongles don't have antennas though unless you spend big £££s?

I think you're basically going to have to try it and see, but I suspect that the outcome will be less than satisfactory. Is there anyway of LANing it by taking cable outside the house and to the room in question that way - a bit fiddly but it could be done quite neatly and ethernet cables are cheap as chips on ebay - I bought a 30m one for £8 the other day.

It crossed my mind, but it would involve too much faff.

The room needs sorting out first, they're buying a computer desk and stuff so there's time still to have a snoop around (and wait to see if Craig Grannell has any pearls of wisdom on the matter).

Why don't you take the laptop round and see how that works?

Because of what Mr Snappa has already mentioned.

Ah, try your DS as well then, see what the signal strength is like.

Yeah I'll see what the signals like with that.

I'm thinking of getting a wireless bridge now.

Why not just move the router? They have more than one phone socket, surely?

You'd think so wouldn't you?

But no.

Presumably, then, they have wander-phones, which will mess up the wireless signal even more.

The whuh the what now?

Curse those Victorians with their elec-trickery!

Indeed.

Only if they're crappy ones, I think most decent ones should play nice on the 2.4GHz band.

Sorry—networking isn't my thing. The only USB dongle I had (some Netgear shit) also failed utterly to work with my G5, and so that isn't exactly helpful.

Gah!

I'll my drill out then.

Is that how much the original PCMCI Airport cards go for? Because I have a spare one. I pulled it from my dead iBook to go in my G4-AGP Powermac, which later became equally dead.

Run one of those current testers that you can buy from any DIY store that looks for metal and live signals in walls before you go frying yourself or shattering your drill bit. Every brick chimney breast I have ever come across gives a "live" current reading until you earth it with your hand. Don't know why, but it does.

@ Gaywood:

No that's how much I paid for the Airport Extreme card I recently bought for an ibook.

You have an older one for sale though?

I don't think the Extreme one would even work in the G4.

I have an older one that is of no use to me. No idea what it's worth. Not much, I'd wager; note that it's 801.11b only. Make me an offer. I'll post it to you, you can test it, and if it works OK, give me cash then.

Note that my G4-450, at least, has a special internal PCMCIA slot that has a dedicated antenna built into the chassis. The Airport card has a small coax connector on it that mates with one that should be wired into the computer already. Signal strength was pretty good when I tested it.

That would be awesome Doc.

I'll have a peep in the casing and see if it's how you descibed yours to be and take you up on the offer.

Christ, you were right, it's worth about £30. What a belming rip off.

Auction 1, auction 2, auction 3.

There goes my bargain!

I was going to say £10-15. See you on ebay!

I've never heard of that before. I have one of those gadgets but the chimney goes inside a stone wall and it doesn't seem to affect the bleepy thing adversely. Anyone else tried it?

How would that work anyway? Something about charged ions in the draught? Meh, colour me skeptical

I now have a good hawking dongle for 30 euro (23 pounds orso) on my g4.. better then airport anyway, and it has a nice antenna