07-18-2007, 07:10 PM

Can somebody help me with this?

I already have DSL working fine with my old power mac computer. It is a 2WIRE300 system with a modem called Home Portal 1000SW. - 3.5 years ago had this put in. Everything works fine.

I bought a brand new imac. Tiger version OS 10.4.6. It is in the next room.

I have just spent what seems like 2 hours on phone with DSL at&t tech person trying to get this to work.

My new imac does not recognize my internet connection. "airport" doesn't recognize it or something. DSL tech person says people with new imacs sometimes problems connecting, and they are just going to have to wait.... (wait for what, I asked? I got no real answer).

Then I called up the apple person I bought it from, he said he hadn't heard of anyone else with this problem. He suggested I drag new computer next to the old one and manually set it up non-wirelessly with modem to see if it works that way, and then Download New Apple Updates on this Brand New Computer. (huh?).

I need this computer to work wirelessly in the other room.

I don't believe I would need an update on a brand new computer. Or would I?
I am very confused and not good at computers at all.
Any clear cut simple answer would be much appreciated.
Thank you.

07-18-2007, 07:15 PM

Is the 2Wire 1000SW set up for WiFi? Does it have an SSID? Is any encryption tuned on on the router?

07-18-2007, 08:00 PM

The 2wire 1000SW has 802.11b only.
The 2wire Home Portal 300 has wireless g.
These are 2 separate devices.

Must say that 2wire is basically only sold thru DSL providers. Why you may ask? Because they get 'em cheaper than they can from any other manufacturer. They're not very good. Have had a couple of 'em myself when that was what the ISP provided. Every tech I've talked to has said to get rid of it. There have been and still are a lot of issues with 2wire devices over 1 year old.

You must not have bought many brand new computers nor Operating Systems. Yes, they all will have updates that will have come out since they were manufactured. My last install of a brand spankin' new copy of Win XP (month ago) had over 80 updates. My Mac on the other hand had 3 and there have been a total of maybe another 10 over the last 7 months. And yes, installing the updates really should be the first thing done on any new system.

1) Which of these two devices are you trying to connect to?

2) If you do in fact have both of these - did your ISP walk you thru trying to connect to each one of them?

3) Have you ever connected wirelessly to either one of these devices from any machine?

4) Was your iMac able to see that a network was available and just not able to make the connection - or did it never see an available connection?

07-19-2007, 12:36 PM

thanks, botomay for your thorough response.
You are right, I haven't had many operating systems
(and don't know what I'm doing with this technical stuff!).

I had my old ancient power mac in one room connected to the 2Wire300 DSL HomePoral 1000SW system. It works fine. I have a wireless non-mac laptop and it works fine too off the modem.

I was trying to wirelessly connect my new imac in another room and it just wouldn't work with tech help from DSL people. We tried things like changing encryption, and other things. They said the new imacs sometimes don't work. The imac could not 'see' the network or something.

But I got the brilliant idea last night to just move my modem to the new computer, since I'm phasing out my old computer. And it worked. Now I'm connected.

So, now I'm happy. It works now, and I'll leave it be.

Also, thanks for the tips on updating a new computer, which would never occur to me.

Thanks so much to dtravis7 and bobtomay.

07-19-2007, 05:53 PM

glad ya got it workin