My SO bought me a Linksys wireless N router (WRT150N) and USB network adapter for Christmas. Cool! My old Linksys wireless b router crapped out over the summer and I haven’t had a network at home since. I open the box to the new router and there’s no manual. But in big letters on the inner box “RUN DISK FIRST” Oh, OK. Except it won’t do anything on my Mac, it is full of .exe files that do me no good. I look at the box for the system requirements : Win XP or Vista. :smack: Oops.
I’m sure there is a way to do it, (my old Linksys worked with my Mac) but I do not know much about networking and I get a very bad headache hooking stuff like that up. I’d rather go have a root canal and then go have a pap smear. I need something Mac compatible and easy to connect.
What brand/sort of equipment should I get after I return this stuff? I think I’d be fine with wireless G.
My main (host) computer is an Intel iMac. I have a Windows laptop and a Windows desktop I’d like to connect to, but not at the same time. Neither has wirelsss built in, so I’d like to get a USB I could switch out with both. My internet connection is a Comcast cable modem.
that USB dongle (that’s a fun word isn’t it? say it with me, dongle, dongle, dongle ) should just work when plugged into your Mac, but since it most likely already has wireless hardware (AirPort) built in, it shouldn’t need it, and the Mac should simply connect to any wireless network, as long as the network itself isn’t secured
up in the upper right corner of the menu bar on your Mac, you should see what looks like an empty pie wedge (mmmmm…pie), click on that, and it should give you the option to “Turn AirPort On”, do that, the wedge should then change to a wedge shaped group of four curved lines, most likely grayed out at this time
click on the wedge, and a drop down list of available wireless networks should appear, some may have distinct names, or they may have meaningless alphanumerics (“Apple Network 424247666abc” or “Linksys 987k4” or something like that), select the wireless signal you want to connect to, and you’re done
then simply run the cable from your Comcast modem to the wireless base and you’re done
As you’ve discovered, Linksys routers now MUST be configured with the wizard that only runs on Windows.
If either of your Windows PCs have a wired network connection, you can plug them directly into the router to do the config. It’s pretty easy - it has to be if they do it via a brain-dead Windows wizard. <g> Write down whatever you name the router/network, and the WPA key. Once the router is up and running and the Windows PC has internet access, you should be able to go over to the Mac and plug in the network name and WPA key and be off and running.
I tried MacTech’s suggestion and it worked! I forgot that my Mac has Airport. I also assumed my router wouldn’t work if it wasn’t hooked up directly to a host computer. I probably will still take it back to get wireless g stuff and use the extra money to buy an iTouch (what I really wanted).
I have no idea about Mac specific issues, but I have to dispute the above statement. I’ve installed two new Linksys routers in the past year and I used neither the Windows Network Wizard nor the packaged install disc. I simply entered the router’s ip address in a web browser and configured via html.
But in big letters on the inner box “RUN DISK FIRST” Oh, OK. Except it won’t do anything on my Mac, it is full of .exe files that do me no good. I look at the box for the system requirements : Win XP or Vista. :smack: Oops.
) should just work when plugged into your Mac, but since it most likely already has wireless hardware (AirPort) built in, it shouldn’t need it, and the Mac should simply connect to any wireless network, as long as the network itself isn’t secured