Leopard, airport and the Ti G4 PB

Question

Level 1

21 points

Leopard, airport and the Ti G4 PB

Hi Fellow Ti Book users.

I recently upgraded the OS to Leopard 10.5.1 on my 1Gig G4 tiPB. Everything went okay, I had no major melt downs or anything. However I have one problem concerning the strength of my wifi signal, or at least the apparent strength.

If I stand right beside a wireless router I can't get the airport icon in the menu bar to register full 100% 4 bars, the highest it goes to is 3. In Tiger I have had no problems and it worked as normal. The download speed seems slower, not a massive amount slower, but certainly slower, the thing is if I pick up a weak signal it has a lot of trouble staying connected, whilst with tiger I never had this problem.

So from reading other threads I can see a lot of PB owners with the same problem, has anyone been able to come up with a way to return performance to Tiger levels?

At this stage I'm considering on reverting the PB back to Tiger and leaving Leopard on my iMac instead!

Thanks

iMac Intel 20" & Titanium G4 Powerbook, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Dec 2, 2007 7:39 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Dec 3, 2007 5:54 PM in response to dawnrazor

I too have found this issue, very poor wireless with 10.5.1, so I split my 80GB HD on my PB so I can run both 10.4.11 and 10.5.1. I believe it to be a driver issue in Leopard.

Reply

Answer 2

dawnrazor Author

Level 1

21 points

Dec 3, 2007 8:12 PM in response to My White Dog

Alas thats not a solution I can live with or that I find practical, so I have reloaded my previous tiger system and settings and all is working very well, if this issue is resolved I will upgrade back to leopard at a later stage. The iMac says on Leopard as its fine. 🙂

Reply

Answer 3

bbharned

Level 1

0 points

Jan 15, 2008 12:57 PM in response to dawnrazor

Hi Dawnrazor,

were you ever able to find a solution to this problem? I have been reading through the postings to no avail. I eagerly await all the OS updates from Mac but never find it fixes anything with my wireless signal strength.

Reply

Answer 4

shidefen

Level 1

0 points

Feb 12, 2008 6:31 AM in response to bbharned

I got the same difficulties at my Ti G4 PB and was hoping for the Leopard 10.5.2 update. But after installing it, the connection has not improved.

I assume it is a driver problem and also tried to reinstall my airport software which came with the Ti G4, but Leopard won't allow me to run the software.

Please, if there is anyone out there, who has an idea how to solve this - please be so kind and share your knowledge. Thank you.

Reply

Answer 5

Mar 6, 2008 6:29 PM in response to dawnrazor

I too have this problem. I almost thought it was the Titanium case that was almost preventing it getting a full signal. But then again, my parents older G3 Dual USB, had the same Airpot Card, and always got a good signal.

Reply

Answer 6

bypass

Level 1

0 points

Mar 13, 2008 1:59 AM in response to Ryan Hertzfeld

Hi,

Same problem here. I hope Apple is gonna fix this soon! After reading this I'm gonna downgrade to Tiger.

Message was edited by: bypass

Reply

Answer 7

Rich Chi

Level 1

0 points

Mar 21, 2008 8:48 AM in response to dawnrazor

Same problem here. Am surprised that there hasn't been a fix yet.

Reply

Answer 8

Apr 6, 2008 11:53 AM in response to dawnrazor

I was thinking of trying Leopard on my old G4 Titanium (DVI) using one of the methods out there for installing on unsupported machines.

I have noticed that even with 10.4.11 my wireless has been pretty spotty over the past few months. I'm pretty sure my logic board is semi-fried (audio doesn't work anymore).

Given people's experiences with the unsupported upgrade and the Airport issue, maybe I should hold off. I don't want my wireless to be any worse than it already is. People are still having problems, yes?

Thanks!

Reply

Answer 9

dawnrazor Author

Level 1

21 points

Apr 6, 2008 10:12 PM in response to Travis Marshall

Hello folks, I'm afraid my solution to this problem has been two fold and probably not practical to may of you.
1) Downgrade your OS back to Tiger, in my case I just reinstalled the superduper backup clone over a firewire while reinstalling tiger using the migration assistant.

2) sell laptop to a nice siberian called sergey and put the proceeds towards anew MBP 🙂

Reply

Answer 10

Apr 8, 2008 3:48 PM in response to dawnrazor

Sorry, but I guess not surprised, to read about your results.

Anyone else have any luck running Leopard on a 800mhz Titanium without major problems? Too much software out there is Leopard-only, and I don't want to go about updating my editing workstation mid-project.

Reply

Answer 11

rorydale

Level 1

5 points

Apr 10, 2008 6:05 PM in response to dawnrazor

I have this exact same problem too. Please fix it!

Reply

Answer 12

roysbrew

Level 1

1 points

Apr 11, 2008 11:48 AM in response to dawnrazor

I Have a powerbook g4 ti running Leopard and I noticed that my signal went down after I enabled WEP on my new Linksys wrt300, before WEP the signal was great.

FYI On my old Linksys wrt54g I had WEP and still I had a great signal. I almost want to drop the WEP and go unsecured but I cannot bring myself to do it.

The only other things I have done are the Mac software updates.

Reply

Answer 13

dawnrazor Author

Level 1

21 points

Apr 16, 2008 6:10 PM in response to dawnrazor

In my opinion G4 are not the best base for leopard, stick to tiger on this one. Or upgrade to Intel.

Reply

Answer 14

rorydale

Level 1

5 points

Apr 16, 2008 7:20 PM in response to dawnrazor

Well, I appreciate your reply, but it is not particularly positive is it? The issue is not compatibility of Leopard with the G4, in fact it performs very well, the issue is that since the upgrade, the airport signal is significantly less than it should be. A driver issue perhaps?

Reply

Answer 15

bbharned

Level 1

0 points

Apr 17, 2008 5:27 AM in response to rorydale

I too have the same issue with my wireless strength and have found myself frustrated and using my wife's intel Mac Mini more often to avoid my wifi issues. It is so bad that I can not sit on my couch and connect with my G4 ti which is only 30 feet from my router. One thought I had was that it could be the airport card itself. Is it too old possibly? Has Apple even recognized this problem in any way that someone knows about?

Reply