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Level 1

0 points

How do you update the firmware on 1st Gen Airport Extreme in OSX Mountain Lion?

A friend gave me a old but never used 1st Gen Airport Extreme 802.11n WiFi Wireless Base Station. I have a couple WiFi dead zones in my house and was told that I could daisy chain the Apple Airport Extreme off of my Verizon FIOS router/modem (802.11G) to fill in the dead spots. During set up the Airport Utility told me that "This version of AirPort Utility requires this AirPort Extreme use firmware version 7.3.1 or later. Go to AirPort Service and Support (link) for more information.

I updated the Airport Utility to the latest version (6.2) and I am still getting the same error message and no other option to update it's firmware. Anyone know of a work around or am I fighting to losing battle here. I tried to contact Apple support, but when I entered the serial number for the Base Station it said the product was over 5 years old and didn't qualify for support service program.

iMac (27-inch Late 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Feb 22, 2013 2:52 PM

18 replies

edex67

Level 4

3,255 points

Feb 25, 2013 11:56 PM in response to JoeMY

The DMG contains the PKG. Both can be installed in the same place.

OP - Open up the DMG, move the PKG to your desktop and open it with Pacifist or unpkg as shown in the Macworld article.

Andyred Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 26, 2013 9:31 AM in response to Andyred

Thanks guys for hanging in there with me. I created a separate folder on my desktop called AirPort Extreme and I opened the .dmg inside Pacifist and extracted the .pkg to that new folder. I was able to open and run the AirPort Utility 5.6 from there which allowed me to finally update the firmware and configure the router. The only question I have left is do I need to keep that folder on my desktop or can it be moved or deleted?

edex67

Level 4

3,255 points

Feb 26, 2013 9:53 AM in response to Andyred

AirPort Utility 5.6 can be moved to /Applications where it can coexist with version 6.

How do you update the firmware on 1st Gen Airport Extreme in OSX Mountain Lion?