A friend of mine wanted to install an AirPort Card in his mother’s old iMac G3 so she could get wireless internet access. We checked on eBay and the going rate for an AirPort card was well over $130. Online stores weren’t any better with one place listing a card at $180! Great Zeus! This made me pretty mad knowing that an elderly lady couldn’t get wifi on her Mac for less than a hundred dollars. So, when I got home, I vented my anger by tearing apart a Lucent Wavelan Silver PC Card. After the guts of it were exposed, I tossed it into my iMac G4, rebooted, and BAM! The iMac acknowledged it as a native Apple AirPort Card. I haven’t installed it in her iMac G3 yet, but I’m very confident it will work. The great thing about this is, these cards can be had for less than $25 with shipping via eBay, so this solution even trumps the silly Sony Vaio PCWA-150S as the cheapest AirPort alternative I can find.
Schwie's Pad
A solemn place to discuss the madness.
if i buy this:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lucent-Orinoco-silver-802-11b-wireless-card_W0QQitemZ6854538999QQcategoryZ74954QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting ,
pull it apart and put it in my ibook g3 900mhz it will be ok?
How hard is it to pull it apart?
thanks, for the info, I just tried this myself. You just saved me a couple hundred bucks.
Thanks Again Jeff
OKJ, you got me really curios. How did you avoid the card hiting the RAM? And how did you place the metal cover back on the G4?
Yoram
Danny, its pretty easy to pull apart. A pair of pliers will come in handy. Gently pull at all the edges first…
Jeff, rock on man…
Yoram, I haven’t tried doing this on a G4, but if you insert the card while the cover is ON, it shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a hole for the airport card to slide into in the back of the G4, so if you don’t mind it popping through a little extra and hanging out the back of your machine, it will work fine… I’d recommend putting some black electricians tape all the way around the card for some extra support.
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for the great tip. Has anyone fit a ‘Lucent Wavelan Silver PC Card’ into a Mac Mini? Any reason it won’t work? (the box seems pretty small)