[ebuddy]

I picked up a 667Mhz PPC Tibook on Craigslist for my daughters. For several months the thing worked great, but now I get "error connecting to airport network". The network is recognized by name, but simply won't connect. I could be sitting on top of the base station-no luck. I figured I'd reinstall Panther (which now puts me at 10.3.5 on this machine), but that didn't work and I've tried a wealth of ideas from keychain settings to $ in front of password... nothing. There may be a problem with the airport card so I'd like to use a wireless USB adapter/dongle to connect (while hoping for a little better range), but the minimum requirement I'm finding for those dongles is OS 10.4.

There is no original Tiger disc that came with this machine. Where on earth would I find a Tiger disc that'll work on this machine and how on earth will I know it'll work?

*I'm concerned that if I try the grey Tiger Install disc that came with my wife's 1.67GHz G4 PPC Powerbook I'll get the error; "this software cannot be installed on this computer".

[BLAZE_MkIV]

You need a retail disk not the machine specific version.

[amazing]

The Faraday cage on the Ti laptops gave a pretty dismal wireless range, but it sounds like maybe your antenna cable has come loose. Have you checked whether the antenna cable is pushed all the way in? Next, go into the networking setup and make sure that the airport card is turned on, namely that someone hasn't setup an "ethernet-only" location.

If the above don't help, the next best thing is a PCMCIA wireless card. I used one quite extensively on my Ti-400 and the difference between the internal card and the PCMCIA was night and day. All of a sudden I had wireless range comparable to an iBook (which had the best wireless range of all Mac laptops.) The 11g card was natively supported, no drivers necessary. Here's a $40 11n card from OWC, which sounds like it's natively supported, 10.3.9 and up, though you may want to give them a call to verify.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer...gy/MXP802NPCM/

With a little searching on eBay or elsewhere, you should be able to find a retail Tiger disk, which will work on any and all Macs.

[ebuddy]

That is absolutely fantastic advice. Thank you! Thanks for the info and the link!

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV 

You need a retail disk not the machine specific version.

I appreciate the help. It has been so long since I've had to worry about an actual, black retail disc that I didn't even give it much thought. Thanks for the help.

[Spheric Harlot]

In a pinch, you can boot the tiBook into Target Disk Mode (hold down the "T" key on startup), connect it to the alu Powerbook and install the newer Tiger system from there, as onto an external hard disk.

This will work fine, but obviously, you must have a valid license to legally use Tiger on the tiBook (i.e. you own the install disk for it, but can't access it at the moment).

[amazing]

Plus, in all likelihood, the internal airport card is OK--and they are much sought after. You should be able to get a good price for it on eBay.