Contribute
Register

How To: Build your own "Real" Airport Card

Just ordered parts to do this after my brother bought a USB netgear wifi adapter that was "mac compatible" and didn't work. no drivers for 10.6, so that may have been the issue, but either way, I just didn't want to have to deal with this again, so i figure it's worth the 40 bucks and a week or two waiting on shipments to just make it work for good.

We'll see how it goes!
 
Great guide, thanks. I now have a working 'Airport' card. But I'm having the drop-out problems (which require a reboot to remedy). I've downloaded the CD Ubuntu to make the required changes for the card to be recognised as a 'real' Airport - BUT I cannot boot into the CD. I cannot even boot into the original iBoot CD I used for my initial SL install. The startup keeps automatically lauching SL.

Can someone please tell me (remind me) how to boot to the Unbutu .iso CD or the iboot CD? This is probably obvious and I'm just missing something.

Thanks

- Core i5 750 - Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 - OS X 10.6.2
 
peterooo said:
Great guide, thanks. I now have a working 'Airport' card. But I'm having the drop-out problems (which require a reboot to remedy). I've downloaded the CD Ubuntu to make the required changes for the card to be recognised as a 'real' Airport - BUT I cannot boot into the CD. I cannot even boot into the original iBoot CD I used for my initial SL install. The startup keeps automatically lauching SL.

Can someone please tell me (remind me) how to boot to the Unbutu .iso CD or the iboot CD? This is probably obvious and I'm just missing something.

Thanks

- Core i5 750 - Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 - OS X 10.6.2

In your BIOS, change boot priority to 1. CD, 2. HDD.
 
flatfoot said:
In your BIOS, change boot priority to 1. CD, 2. HDD.

I've tried this. In my BIOS I've set 'First Boot Device' as [CDROM] and the Second as [Hard Disk]

Under 'Hard Disk Boot Priority' I only ever have '1. SCSI-0' and '2. Bootable add in cards' listed - and I cannot change their order.

iBoot CD is in the CD drive, but it still boots into SL every time. Even at start-up when I press any key to reveal my options... no CD is showing. Before I installed SL the start-up process always found the iBooot CD.
 
flatfoot said:
peterooo said:
Great guide, thanks. I now have a working 'Airport' card. But I'm having the drop-out problems (which require a reboot to remedy). I've downloaded the CD Ubuntu to make the required changes for the card to be recognised as a 'real' Airport - BUT I cannot boot into the CD. I cannot even boot into the original iBoot CD I used for my initial SL install. The startup keeps automatically lauching SL.

Can someone please tell me (remind me) how to boot to the Unbutu .iso CD or the iboot CD? This is probably obvious and I'm just missing something.

Thanks

- Core i5 750 - Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 - OS X 10.6.2

In your BIOS, change boot priority to 1. CD, 2. HDD.
Better yet, keep the BIOS boot priority on HDD (otherwise boot is too slow), and use F12 only when you need to boot off the CD.

You might want to check that the SATA connectors are well plugged after you tinkered in the guts of your box...

Good Luck !
Lnx2Mac
 
I picked up the adapter off of ebay for about $15 shipped and bought the airport card from B&H Photo for $50. Another $65 well spent; thanks for sharing the idea and instructions!

I think I paid about $50 for my Netgear WN311B and it would drop the signal all the time due to interference with my Magic Mouse. My "real" card is much better.
 
Before I followed the guide and flashed the adapter in ubuntu, I would get periodic drop-outs where the adapter would fail to register any networks. I'd have to restart to fix.
But now, if I sleep the computer then wake up, the adapter goes into SUPER SLOW mode and only transfers data at 5-10 kB/s. I have to restart to fix this as well.
I can't win :banghead:
 
Great guide, I followed it for my first machine and it worked flawlessly.

However, now I built another machine and I use the wifi card in it, and OSX fails to detect it. I did mess around with a bunch of kexts in order to get this machine up and running (everything is perfect except this wifi situation) Does anybody have any ideas? What kexts are required for airport cards? I got the 2006 card if that matters any.
 
Hi,

I used my old macbook's airport card to get wireless on my hack.

Everything is working great on a easybeast made-system. But as soon as I use the good DSDT for my mobo from tony's database, SL doesn't recognize it anymore.

Rebrand is not an option because I'm already using a real Apple card. In which direction should I search? editing the DSDT perhaps? but how?

Thanks for any hint,

eeaiou
 
Back
Top