emac not reading airport card

I have verizon mifi now and it works on my ibook but my old emac doesn't. I got a airport card for it and it fit nicely, followed instructions on installation but nothing. Is there a trick??

What encryption did you set up with? Some older models are incompatible with all forms of WPA.

That's what I'm trying to figure out - I have no idea what I'm doing. The emac will take an airport card but how do you set it up?? there is no airport on system pref. Keeps asking for PPP.

What does Apple System profiler (About this Mac > More Info > Networking > Airport) have to say about the card? Is it being recognized?

in the network part it does say Airport Card and when I click on that it just says, "no information found."

Cannot help with Verizon, but is it possible the Airport card of the eMac is not compatible as it may be 802.11G or even B?

Well, I did my homework on what card to get and "supposedly" the compatibility for this emac is the 802.11g card and that's what I got....
I looked up on the apple site and it says an emac running on at least 10.2 should take an airport card. I'm running it on 10.4 but still nothing..

dolphin01 said:

Well, I did my homework on what card to get and "supposedly" the compatibility for this emac is the 802.11g card and that's what I got....

Click to expand...

Just so we know exactly what eMac we're talking about...what model eMac is it (cpu speed)?

- Nick

It's a powerPC G4 (2.1), CPU Speed: 800 MHz

dolphin01 said:

It's a powerPC G4 (2.1), CPU Speed: 800 MHz

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately...there were two different eMac models with the 800mhz cpu. One had "GeForce2 MX" video hardware...and the other model had "ATI Radeon 7500" video hardware.

Which does your eMac have? If you don't know...look under:

- Apple Menu
- About This Mac
- More Info

- Nick

ok..... Model: Maxtor 2F040L0 That is under ATA Bus. Under Hardware overview is just says machine model: PoweMac 4,4
Does that help?

dolphin01 said:

ok..... Model: Maxtor 2F040L0 That is under ATA Bus. Under Hardware overview is just says machine model: PoweMac 4,4
Does that help?

Click to expand...

Sorry...that doesn't help!

It's very simple. Go to the "About this Mac" then the "More Info" page. All of those items listed on the left side of the window are "clickable/selectable"...and then the appropriate info is displayed.

Click on "Graphics/Displays" in the column on the left side of the window...this will tell you what graphics hardware this eMac has.

- Nick

ah, ok..... I wasn't sure which hardware to be clicking on. Ok.... It's an ATI Radeon 7500

dolphin01 said:

ah, ok..... I wasn't sure which hardware to be clicking on. Ok.... It's an ATI Radeon 7500

Click to expand...

Ok...now that's the info I was looking for...so thanks.

The reason why this was so important to verify is (since there were 2 different eMac models with the 800mhz cpu)...one of them used the older wireless "b" only Airport card...and the other one (the one you have)...used the newer Airport Extreme wireless "b/g".

So to be 100% sure...does the Airport card you have installed in your 800mhz eMac look like this:



- Nick

yes, it does. So it should work right??

dolphin01 said:

yes, it does. So it should work right??

Click to expand...

Yes it should. Don't laugh...but sometimes folks forget to do two very critical thing when installing their airport cards:

1. The card needs to be inserted properly into the Airport card slot.
2. The Airport antenna wire needs to be plugged into the card.

So just checking...did you complete both of these steps when installing your "Airport Extreme" card?

If so...do you get any Airport signal strength "bars" on the Airport icon (photo below)...in the right side of the menu bar:



- Nick

ha, ha... yeah I read all sorts of posts on people not installing them properly OR forgetting to plug the antenna in. did all that. I pushed it in as far as I can without breaking anything - logo side down. But still no airport icon.

dolphin01 said:

ha, ha... yeah I read all sorts of posts on people not installing them properly OR forgetting to plug the antenna in. did all that. I pushed it in as far as I can without breaking anything - logo side down. But still no airport icon.

Click to expand...

I'm assuming that you purchased this Airport card used...and since you mentioned that your WiFi works with your iBook (which would eliminate your wireless router being bad or misconfigured).

Are your network settings on your eMac the same as on your iBook?

If so...this may be sending us down the road to considering that the eMac's Airport card may not be working.

- Nick

Yes, I did buy it used off ebay. About the settings on the emac. It's different from the ibook. When I go into system preferences, the ibook has an "airport" but the emac does not. When I dig deeper into system preferences (asking for help thru the assistant), the wireless tab is there but not highlighted so I can't check it. This has me stumped. Could that be because the emac is not reading the card?
I'm wondering too if the card is bad. there is another one for sale that is new (still off ebay) but I sure hate dishing out more money for another one if it's something I"m not doing right.

I'm using the mifi thru verizon. No downloads needed for it. Just turn it on and ibook found it so.... I"m assuming the emac should do the same if all is right

Well this thread finally got me motivated to "fire-up" one of my eMac's (I haven't started this one up for probably 2+ years)!

This eMac is running OS 10.4.11...within about 5-10 seconds I was signed into my Airport wireless network (I got a new router within the past 2 years, and needed to enter the password).

I just clicked on the airport icon in the menu bar, chose the network I wanted to join, and entered the password...BAMM...I'm in!

Apple really makes these sort of things pretty darn simple...so if everything was installed correctly, and if the airport card is functioning...hard to say what's wrong...other than the airport card is no good (which can happen).

- Nick

p.s. If you're running OS 10.4...are you updated to OS 10.4.11?