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angelmb · Apr 28, 2010, 01:33 PM

I need to add wi-fi ability to an old Power Mac MDD 2003. The ASUS WL-138G V2 PCI card is said to work right out of the box with Mac OS X Leopard. Anyone here who could confirm this?.

Wasn't that the case, which one would you recommend?. The Power Mac MDD 2003 was not AirPort Extreme compatible.

Thanks.

angelmb · May 3, 2010, 08:53 AM

Well, it works great. No need of 3rd party crappy software anymore, works right out of the box as it is recognized as AirPort.

Big Mac · 12:02 PM

That's great to know, angel. I may do that on my G5 because the location I'm moving it to isn't physically near the router. I was considering Actiontec ethernet over powerline adapters until I read your post.

angelmb · May 3, 2010, 12:31 PM

It is a standard PCI 1.0 card; is that going to work with your G5?

Anyhow, I can't test it the way I would like to. I am stuck with Orange Internet Everywhere service right now, and given it has reached the specific quota, the speed tops at 12 KB/s. Browse the web like it's 90s !!!

reader50 · May 3, 2010, 01:41 PM

If you have two Macs on your LAN, you can do some big files transfer between them. Calculate the transfer speed.

Big Mac · May 3, 2010, 03:11 PM

My G5 is a PCI-X rather than a PCIe model, so as long as it's a standard length card it should work.

angelmb · May 3, 2010, 04:20 PM

Originally Posted by reader50

If you have two Macs on your LAN, you can do some big files transfer between them. Calculate the transfer speed.

I have a Mac Pro and an iMac on my LAN. I can't connect from the MDD to the Mac Pro & iMac nor I can connect the Mac Pro & iMac to the G4 MDD. I have a clean installation of 10.5 on MDD's second internal hard disk -updating it right now to 10.5.8- just for testing purposes, as I have no idea what prevents any network connection being the G4 MDD implicated.

Big Mac · May 4, 2010, 12:34 AM

Whenever machines seemingly on the same LAN can't see each other it's because there's more than one router performing DHCP between them. For instance, if you have a wired router with devices on it and a wireless router connected to the wired router, the wireless router would be set up by default to perform its own DHCP for those clients connected to it. If you have more than one router make sure DHCP is only enabled on one of them.

Big Mac · May 7, 2010, 01:08 AM

I ordered the card a couple of days ago. Btw, angel, do you know if your machine goes into deep sleep mode with it installed? In other words, do all the fans turn off? And does your G4 wake reliably with it installed?

angelmb · May 7, 2010, 02:49 AM

No problem, sleeps as a baby, but I think the quality of the antenna leaves much to be desired so I'm looking for a (antenna) replacement.

Big Mac · May 7, 2010, 03:42 AM

Thank you for the quick response. And thank you for the heads-up on the antenna concern. I have pretty good wireless coverage in the area I want to set up in, so hopefully that won't be an issue.

Big Mac · 05:52 PM

Update: This card was indeed not compatible with my G5, as angelmb correctly surmised. I didn't realize that there were different slot-height PCI cards. I thought it was one standard and that PCI-X was just a faster version, but this card was substantially shorter than my slot and far smaller in width as well. I tried seating it anyway thinking perhaps since it was still a PCI card I could get away with it, but with it installed my G5 turned off right after being turned on. I took the card out and it ran normally after that, but I hope I didn't blow the slot I was trying to use. Serves me right for not doing enough research.

I found another cheap card that is identified as G3-G5 including PCI-X compatible. It looks like it's a full length card, so we'll see what happens with that one.

AKcrab · May 9, 2010, 06:21 PM

If that card doesn't work out for you, OWC has one that should work: Newer Technology MAXPower 802.11n/g/b Wirel... (MXP802NPCI) at OWC
The "external base" seems a bit hinky, but it does do 802.11/b/g/n, and it's not *that* much more $$.

Big Mac · May 9, 2010, 08:15 PM

Thank you, AKcrab. I'll post an update with my impressions of the card I just ordered when I get it installed.

angelmb · May 12, 2010, 06:18 AM

It was the antenna. Once replaced, the ASUS WL-138G V2 PCI card works GREAT.

angelmb · May 13, 2010, 04:18 PM

Addendum: it also works with a Blue&White G3 running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. The Asus card is listed as AirPort Extreme, woot !!!

Big Mac · May 21, 2010, 01:33 AM

Update: the second card I purchased also doesn't work on my G5 despite explicitly stating G5 PCI-X compatibility. Go figure. The card AKcrab referenced looks like it's nearly the same, so rather than take a chance on it I'm going to go with Actiontec Ethernet Over Power, which ironically was my original plan.

reader50 · May 21, 2010, 01:59 AM

Big Mac, do you have the option to boot into an alternate OS X install? Your description suggests a kext conflict - the card should work if it's advertised to do so. That could mean a kext got installed for a different card, and it's interfering with the current card.

Big Mac · 08:34 AM

Oh, it's a hardware issue. These cards are physically too small and don't fit in a PCI-X slot. They don't fit properly on their own, and there's also no way to screw them down to secure them because if I line their brackets up with the case to screw them down, they physically don't reach the slot. They're just way too small even though this most recent one I got was explicitly called PCI-X compatible. I don't really understand the lack of compatibility, but I'm wondering if there were two different and incompatible card lengths described by the PCI spec. I always thought that PCI-X was backward compatible with most PCI cards. I do remember reading that a certain voltage type of PCI card was not compatible with PCI-X, and maybe those cards are differentiated by being smaller.