# Help!!  Mac in a wireless home PC network



## golek (Sep 16, 2003)

I hope someone on this board can help me with my simple problem.  Please excuse my ignorance about Macs.   Any help is greatly appreciated.  

In my house I have a cable internet connection which I share among several computers.  Hardware configuration is as follows:

Internet>>Cable modem>>Linksys Wireless Access Point Router w/ 4 port switch (BEFW11S4)>>Clients

My house is 3 stories.  The cable modem and router/accesspoint are on the 2nd floor.  I rent rooms in the house to others so moving computers around is not an option.  Everything works great, except now I have a new roommate who lives on the third floor who has a Mac and wants to connect into our wireless network.  I know almost nothing about Macs and need some assistance.

Here is a breakdown of the arrangement:

*First Floor:*  1 Win XP Wireless Client (Linksys WUSB11 adapter)
*Second Floor:*  Cable Modem, Linksys Wireless Access Point Router w/ 4 port switch (802.11b), 2 Win 98 Ethernet Clients.  Both of these clients are plugged into the switch on the router and neither have wireless capability.
*Third Floor:*  1 Power Mac G4 w/ OSX ver. 10.2.6

I want to leave everything as is, but I want the Mac to connect to the internet through my wireless router which has WEP enabled.  First I need to know exactly which network adapter my roommate needs to buy.  Second, how do I go about configuring WEP on the Mac client?  Is is easy?  Remember I a not familiar with Mac OS and neither is my roommate.  It's his first Mac.


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## mslifkin (Sep 16, 2003)

His G4 might have a socket for an Airport Extreme card ($100 from Apple). If not, probably any PCI wireless card should do. I've got an Airport Extreme card in my Powerbook, and to get WEP to work I had to put in the hex codes; it wouldn't work with just a password. (I put the password in my router, and that generated the hex codes that I entered into my Airport software.) Once you put the hex codes in you can have OS X "remember" them in what it calls a "Keychain" so you don't have to enter them everytime. It works like a champ. And, by the way, the Airport Extreme card is 802.11g (54 mbit/sec) but will also work with 802.11b. Hope this helps.

Regards,
Marc


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## golek (Sep 16, 2003)

If his G4 has a socket for the Airport Extreme, what does the socket look like?


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## mslifkin (Sep 17, 2003)

Once you open the right side panel, it would be on the panel towards the front, to the right of the fan. According to the manual, the card goes in with the hole for the antenna to the left. If he doesn't have the manual handy you can doenload it from Apple's web site.

Regards,
Marc


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## golek (Sep 17, 2003)

Thanks Marc!

All is well


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## iMan (Sep 21, 2003)

Hi golek

just remember when you put in the hex code in the airport utility you need to put a $ in front of it.
Did that on my wife's iBook to connect to my Netgear wireless router

Viktor


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## Arden (Sep 22, 2003)

Is it working?


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## golek (Sep 22, 2003)

Yes, I put the $ in front of the hex code and it works like a champ!

Thanks everyone!


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