Airport Extreme for Older Macs?

michael grey

Does anyone have any insight on the likelihood of an Airport Extreme card for my dual 1Ghz Powermac?



Is there some sort of hardware limitation that would prevent Apple -- or a third-party -- from making an 802.11g card for some older (but not old) Macs?

davechen

Well, there are already 802.11g PC cards like this linksys:



<a href="http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=324504"; target="_blank">http://www.pcconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=324504</a>;



It should be just a matter of getting Mac drivers.

pesi

you've got a tower, so all you'd have to do is throw in a pci card.



just not in your airport slot.



i read somewhere that the old airport slots don't run fast enough to handle 802.11g

kesh

Right. Completely different bus connection, so a PCI card is the only option for older towers.

michael grey

Hmmm, well good to know. So, is it too much expect native support for the card in OSX?

applenut

[quote]Originally posted by Kesh:

<strong>Right. Completely different bus connection, so a PCI card is the only option for older towers.</strong><hr></blockquote>



i dont know about that.



the miniPCI 802.11g cards are half the size of the old airport cards in the PCMCIA based format. I think the size advantage is the reason for the switch.



I dont see why the old bus would not handle the new speed.

ghost_user_name

at 53Mbps, the bus just needs to be able to handle that kind of throughput. I'd be surprised if it couldn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't an Apple option to do it on older machines.

leonard

See this thread... <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=001994"; target="_blank">http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=001994</a>;



Belkin is supposed to come out with some products, but I haven't seen anything on their website yet.