Airport Help Needed

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MuffinKnight

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I recently came into possession of an Emac computer, for which I got the Airport Extreme card it needed. All of the rest of the computers in the house are windows, all using a wireless network. I can't seem to get the Mac to pick up the wireless signal though, and whenever I try to connect it through airport all the airport options are greyed out. I'm not familiar at all with the apple OS systems, so this is all new to me. I thought I'd just put the apple card in and attach the antennae to it like the instructions on the mac support site said, which has been done, and it'd detect the wireless network and connect to it, but none of the icons or anything it's telling me to click on are showing up. I can't even find the Internet Connect option! What do I do?
 
What version of OS X is the eMac running or is it running the old Classic Mac System 9?
 
No, it's running OS X tiger, I think. I managed to get it where the Airport thing is showing up, and it's picking up the wireless signal, but for some reason it won't let me connect-it's password protected, but every time I enter the password for the wireless we have, it says the password is wrong. There is no other password, so I'm not sure what to do.
 
What version of OS X are you running?
Go to your Apple menu, and select About this Mac. The window that appears will show you the OS X version, and will also show you your processor speed, along with how much memory is installed. What does that show for yours?
Although the amount of memory doesn't matter, the processor will help determine exactly which generation of hardware that you have. Too old may mean that you may not connect to a WPA2 wireless network, for example.
 
Really? 10.4 last system update is version 10.4.11
My suggestion is to connect to your router with an ethernet cable from your eMac.
Run Software Update, until no more updates are found.
You will get to restart several times during that update process, as each update installs. Part of those updates will be updates to the networking processes in the system, which may let you use the wireless network after the updates are complete.

Another suggestion which will help the rest of your system work more stably, is to add more RAM memory. 256 is the bare minimum for use with OS X 10.4. Your eMac takes PC2700 (or PC3200 is OK, too, and easier to find) SDRAM. You have two memory slots, each can take up to 1 GB, for a maximum of 2 GB - or 8 times as much as you have now.
 
Yes, I would try using WEP and/or Open network (for troubleshooting purposes, don't recommend a open network) to see if that works. Also, make sure that your router is broadcasting 802.11b. Newer routers have the to only support newer ones like 802.11n or a combination that may not include b.
 
Go to the system preferences/network. It should say "new network interface detected" or something similar, and it will tell you what it is (should say airport). Go deeper into network settings by hitting configure on one of the connections until the option to apply is not greyed out. Hit apply and then the airport should be configured. Can't give you any clearer instructions since I'm just going by memory even though I've done this hundreds of times installing airport cards and airport extreme cards. But essentially, its a way to "nudge" system prefs to see the airport extreme. Also, might want to set the service order in system preferences/network to make sure airport is moved to the top of the list in the service order.
 
On my old G4 iMac, I had to enter the WEP key in hexadecimal. For some reason the ASCII encryption was not done the same way on the Mac and on the router.
 
Hexadecimal? What do you mean? If you mean converting it to ASCII, I tried it and it won't let me enter the full amount into the thing, it only allows room for 12 characters and the whole thing won't fit.
 
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My son had an eMac. He had wireless problems.

There were two reasons. Both fairly straightforward.

His computer needed an Airport card, not an Airport Express/Extreme. Have you got the right one? What year of manufacture is your eMac?

Once he had the right card, he still had trouble. It was solved by this forum (I think it was my first ever question here!). The problem was that the card on the eMac needed to be seated properly and it needed a very strong push to do it. We both shied away from the force that was eventually needed as it seemed too much. But it did snap into place and after that, all was well.

Check the specs here: http://support.apple.com/specs/#emac
 
The airport is the right one and it's seated properly, and it is picking up the wireless signal-the problem now is that for some reason it won't accept the password for the wireless, saying it's the wrong one.
 
MuffinKnight said:
The airport is the right one and it's seated properly, and it is picking up the wireless signal-the problem now is that for some reason it won't accept the password for the wireless, saying it's the wrong one.
Click to expand...

An old trick with PPC Mac with the WEP password was to use the $ symbol as the first digit followed by the actual password. Be careful to follow every capital letter and small letters as the actual password.
 
And have you downloaded/installed the latest version of the Airport Utility? It doesn't usually appear on the Software update. Make sure the one you use is the latest one that works with your System.
 
I can't download or install anything, it's not connected so it can't download anything and I have none of the install disks-I got this thing secondhand.
 
Thank you to everyone who's offered help here, my boyfriend's brother (who is a techie) is taking it to connect to an ethernet cable so it can update, which it needs before it can be connected to the kind of wireless we have. Thank you all for offering your advice!
 
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