mac pro in need of airport solution

[lejonet]

Hi!
I have a 3-4 year old Mac Pro 2 x2.66 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon. When I bought it I was stupid enough to think that I would never need to connect to any wireless network so there is no airport card installed. But now I would need to be able to log in to an already exisiting wireless network in the house. I am too far away to be able to hook up with a cable. Should I go for an Airport extreme or express? Is it possible to connect via ethernet cable from the mac straight to the extreme (without having any airport card in the mac) and from there log in to the existing network wireless? what other options are there?
Grateful for any help.

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Suggest you look for the original Airport card and fit that. Pretty delicate operation as the card is small and the antenna cables are pretty fine. Assuming the model is 4.1 look for:-

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Apple-BCM...#ht_4272wt_966

Also there should be second hand cards available on eBay US.

[lejonet]

Thanks!
will get this one

[Slydude]

You could also do as you suggest and connect another device to the network and connect the Mac Pro to that. It would have to be something that supports "bridge" mode. I did that recently when I discovered that the time capsule did not provide this feature. It would join an existing network fine and provide a wireless signal but this left the ethernet ports inactive.

There are some wireless USB dongles which also work but tread carefully here. Last time I checked some of them do not have drivers for Lion yet and may not be recognized without them. One of the dongles I tried also had software which did not automatically restart the connection each time I had to restart the computer. You'd be surprised how quickly that gets to be annoying.