Is the G5 external Airport antenna necessary?

Question

Level 1

20 points

Is the G5 external Airport antenna necessary?

I'm bringing my office G5 home and am trying to get it to connect to our already existing Airport network. Expect I lost the T-shaped antenna at work. Is that necessary? Because I bought an Airport Extreme card and installed it, and the G5 sees it and says that Airport is on, but I'm not picking up our network, nor am I picking up our neighbors wireless network. I always use that as a troubleshooting step to see if a computer is at least picking up signal, if not the one from our home network. And I'm not seeing any networks showing up.

G5(PowerPC), Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Apr 21, 2008 7:15 PM

Reply

Answer 1

FangSuede

Level 4

2,195 points

Apr 21, 2008 9:19 PM in response to GreenScreen

Hi,
There is an antenna inside the G5, did you connect it to the Airport Extreme card?
Unless your wireless router is a great distance away or there is interference it should work okay. My G5 has no trouble seeing my home network without an external antenna.
If everything is connected properly you may have a configuration, not hardware, problem.

Regards,
Dave

Reply

Answer 2

maclover

Level 4

3,850 points

Apr 22, 2008 2:02 AM in response to GreenScreen

Hi, and a Warm Welcome to the Power Mac G5 Forum!

If you have a G5 other than the "Late 2005" dual-cores - which have internal antennae - You may find you get better Airport reception with the antenna

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86413

It should have been in the G5 packaging (originally) - but can usually be picked up on eBay - or here

http://www.mac-pro.com/Airport-Extreme-External-Antenna-for-Power-Mac-G5-Tower?s c=2&category=7286

if not.

Good Luck.

Reply

Answer 3

GreenScreen Author

Level 1

20 points

Apr 23, 2008 8:49 PM in response to GreenScreen

Well, I bought an external antenna and popped it in and Voila! I was picking up signals left and right and logged into our home network in 10 seconds. So for me, it was necessary. My Airport Express is one floor below, in the basement, and this computer is in our living room upstairs so I guess the antenna was necessary.

Reply