June 20, 2007
Force 802.11n into your older Mac
Posted Jun. 20, ’07, 7:47 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Hardware
Good news for those of you that love your existing CardBus featuring PowerPC laptop. You can now buy the nQuicky PCMCIA/CardBus card to get up to 802.11n speed. It may seem foolish to put the newest technology in an older system, but you get a side benefit that you might not have already thought of. You take away one more 802.11g or 802.11b device that’s slowing down your great new network.
I can even think of one 802.11b sporting machine that I think really deserves one of these: the Pismo. The last generation of Powerbook G3 was a thing of beauty, functionality, and power. Mine is still in service. It still leaves me wondering about those poor MacBook Pro Core Duo (sans “2”) owners. Is there an ExpressCard 802.11n card that works with it?
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There are plenty of wireless N USB adapters out there, but as far as I could tell from researching this a couple of weeks, none have OS X drivers.
Although it appears there were suggestions earlier this year that there would be one for the Belkin N1 adapter, it doesn't appear to have happened.
Yes, us poor MacBook (Core Duo) users are stuck in 802.11g land. We have neither a PC Card or ExpressCard slot for an upgrade.
I just looked at a new Airport Extreme and in it is soem software that provides a firmware upgrade to n wireless. Check the Apple site.
MacBook Pro owners with a Core Duo chip can upgrade to 802.11n with Apple's Airport Extreme upgrade kit for Mac Pro's (MA688Z/A or /B).
It requires opening the case (18 screws!) but the wireless card is right there, and it's a drop in replacement. It still requires the $1.99 enabler from Apple as well.
Check out this link on how to do it.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/macbookpro_wireless_N_upgrade/macbookpro_N_card_install.html