Airport Questions

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Is it possible to use PC wireless cards with the AirPort Extreme slots?



I want to get an updated 15" which I assume will have AirPort Extreme. I want to have wireless around my house but if I could Avoid the cost of an AirPort...or the AirPort card and buy a cheap one I would like it. Is this possible?



Also can I use a cheap PC base station with an AirPort card?





Edit: Can a mod change my title to something more appropriate, my symbol didn't work so its just a '?'

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    gabidgabid Posts: 477member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ast3r3x

    Is it possible to use PC wireless cards with the AirPort Extreme slots?



    I want to get an updated 15" which I assume will have AirPort Extreme. I want to have wireless around my house but if I could Avoid the cost of an AirPort...or the AirPort card and buy a cheap one I would like it. Is this possible?



    Also can I use a cheap PC base station with an AirPort card?





    Edit: Can a mod change my title to something more appropriate, my symbol didn't work so its just a '?'




    Make sure you have the AirPort 3.1 (or 3.1.1: both work) software. Then you can use any Broadcom chipset-based 802.11g PC Card (myself, I use a Linksys).



    3rd party base stations should work, but take a look on-line to see which ones do for sure. A pretty good site about all this can be found here. You can ignore all the info about the hack, since AirPort 3.1 gets rid of the need for this: just take a gander at the comments from the top two news stories to see what hardware works best. Again, I can vouch for the Linksys card, but have no experience with base stations. Mind you, I have had absolutely no problems connecting to any 802.11b base station I've come across.
  • Reply 2 of 13
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gabid

    Make sure you have the AirPort 3.1 (or 3.1.1: both work) software. Then you can use any Broadcom chipset-based 802.11g PC Card (myself, I use a Linksys).



    3rd party base stations should, work, but take a look on-line to see which ones do for sure. A pretty good site about all this can be found here. You can ignore all the info about the hack, since AirPort 3.1 gets rid of the need for this: just take a gander at the comments from the top two news stories to see what hardware works best. Again, i can vouch for the Linksys card, but have no experience with base stations. Mind you, I have had absolutely no problems connecting to any 802.11b base station I've come across.




    Awesome, thanks man.







    ...and thank you to the friendly mystery mod
  • Reply 3 of 13
    gabidgabid Posts: 477member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ast3r3x

    Awesome, thanks man.



    No problem. The only caveat I should have mentioned is that I have no clue if this will stll work in Panther. I'd assume so since Apple has stated that this all working was official (though never broadly announced), but no one ever seemed to be able to test this when I posted the question in the Panther forum.
  • Reply 4 of 13
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gabid

    Make sure you have the AirPort 3.1 (or 3.1.1: both work) software. Then you can use any Broadcom chipset-based 802.11g PC Card (myself, I use a Linksys).



    I think you should clarify that you aren't talking about stuffing a PC card into the Airport slot, but instead suggest forgetting about the Airport card slot and using a PC card instead. The caveat, I'd think, is the antenna - if you use a PC card you trade the PB's large built-in antenna for whatever can be crammed onto the end of a PC card. A labmate of mine had a bad experience with that - her PC card's effective wireless range was less than a quarter that of my iBook's.



    In my experience, any 802.11 base station works fine. Non-Apple wireless routers tend ot be cheaper and often have more LAN slots.I've had great experiences with D-Link 614+'s. D-Link also makes 802.11g wireless routers.
  • Reply 5 of 13
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    I would probably get an AirPort card with a cheaper base station as long as I'm assured they will work together haha. If I have an airport extreme card and a 802.11b cheap basestation they will work?



    I am worried about configuring stuff more rather then them not working, I don't want to have to use a PC to set it up.
  • Reply 6 of 13
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Wireless routers all use web-based configuration tools: platform-agnostic. You plug an ethernet cable from your Mac to the router, point Safari to 192.168.0.1, and configure away. D-Link is supposedly not the most user-friendly, but I had little trouble getting their routers up and running. Apple claims that the Airport Extreme cards will work with any public 802.11b router, so you're probably safe getting a non-ABS router.
  • Reply 7 of 13
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Towel

    Wireless routers all use web-based configuration tools: platform-agnostic. You plug an ethernet cable from your Mac to the router, point Safari to 192.168.0.1, and configure away. D-Link is supposedly not the most user-friendly, but I had little trouble getting their routers up and running. Apple claims that the Airport Extreme cards will work with any public 802.11b router, so you're probably safe getting a non-ABS router.



    This is probably what I'll do, do they work with g as well?
  • Reply 8 of 13
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
  • Reply 9 of 13
    gabidgabid Posts: 477member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ast3r3x

    This is probably what I'll do, do they work with g as well?



    If you go the 3rd party route for the base station, do post again; I'm curious to hear some opinions on how well the different "g" products works. I do seem to remember when I was reading up on the subject that I think (though don't quote me on this) that people were having some problems with the D-Link base stations (I know for sure that people had problems with the PC Card).



    As for the range issue, I've been happy with my external antenna, though I have nothing to compare it with.
  • Reply 10 of 13
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Does this look like it would work well? http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=10
  • Reply 11 of 13
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ast3r3x





    ...and thank you to the friendly mystery mod




    Dare I say the magical mystery observateur?!



    Hey, someone had to!
  • Reply 12 of 13
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by andrewm

    Dare I say the magical mystery observateur?!



    Hey, someone had to!




    I would insist you do, but it wouldn't do us much good if he wasn't friendly, so Friendly Magical Mystery Observateur will do nicely.
  • Reply 13 of 13
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=6 is what I will be getting



    How 3D does the connection get? Like If I am in my basement and the station is on the 2nd floor of the house, should it still work?



    I assumed it would be Apple's site about their antennas which are directional. Made me start worrying haha.
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