Mac Mini upgraded with Atheros Airport Extreme

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Level 2

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Mac Mini upgraded with Atheros Airport Extreme

Earlier this year I upgraded my mid-2006 Mac Mini (Core Duo) with an (Macbook Original Wireless WIFI Card 802.11n AR5BXB72 - Atheros) Airport Extreme Card to get N-WiFi.
That works fine in Leopard 10.5.8; but in 10.6.4 & 10.6.5, I can't get connected to my router. Is a new driver needed for 10.6 ?

Network Utility / Info Tab / Network Interface (en1) reports "Model: Wireless Network Adapter," as (802.11a/b/g/n).

As an aside, the Bluetooth seems much flakier now than with the original card.

iMac 2.8GHz 2008; Tiger on G4/1.25DP FW800; Mini-1.66GHz; PwrBk G4-12"; Pismo G3, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Nov 12, 2010 1:11 PM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

83,011 points

Nov 13, 2010 6:56 PM in response to Al Cellier

Stick to 10.5.8. Once you make hardware from one Mac run on another, there is no guarantee it will survive updates. And what elements are needed to keep them running through updates are very rarely if ever known. The only hardware you can swap from a Mac Mini Intel to a MacBook or vise versa is the hard drive. Even then, it will likely need to be reformatted for the new machine after being transferred since many drivers are system specific, and the machine may not know what to do with the different drivers.

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