I recently purchased a D-Link WUA-1340 Wireless G USB Adapter. Fresh orange-and-black design, and I was looking forward to plugging it into my iMac G4/800 to get it connected sans cords to my network. Alas, my excitement got the better of me, because upon examining the package contents and sifting through D-Link's site — no Mac driver! I plugged the thing in and it wouldn't light up.
Thus began a trek of arduous googling such as:
- USB Wireless Driver Hacking
- D-Link WUA-1340 Wireless Adapter with Mac
- D-Link WUA Confirmed working 10.4.5
- Which USB wireless adaptor has Mac OS X support?
Apparently, I'd come onto a whole minefield of problems before mine. Not wanting to purchase a more expensive AirPort Extreme Card, as it were, the solution lay in chipset manufacturer Ralink's website. After navigating my way past more broken drivers, I finally found the Ralink Macintosh drivers page!
Apparently, there are a lot of wireless devices using those Ralink chipsets.
From here, what I did — your specific details may vary:
Download the Ralink USB (RT257x/RT2671) drivers. (I was initially on a wired Ethernet connection so I could do this.)
Install them on your Mac — just as you would any standard program.
Restart.
Insert your Ralink-based wireless USB adapter in a free USB slot. If it has a status indicator light, it should glow like this:
Next, in your main Applications folder, look for "USBWirelessUtility". (It may open automatically after inserting your wireless USB adapter, but it didn't for me.) Open it and look at the different tabs. Since this doesn't use Apple's de facto AirPort means (e.g., putting an icon in the menu bar to indicate signal strength), it's not so intuitive. However, it is more detailed.
Go to Wireless Utility > Site Survey tab and click "CONNECT". (It'll ask you to enter details accordingly. If you have security like WEP turned on, put that info in or you won't be able to connect.)
Go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Network.
From the "Show" popup menu, select "Network Port Configurations".
Click "New".
Click "Port". You'll see something like "Ethernet Adaptor (en1)".
Give it a name, and click "OK".
The port will show up in the list. (I dragged it to the top to give it the highest priority when trying to connect.)
From "Show", select that Ethernet adaptor port.
Under the "TCP/IP" tab, "Configure IPv4" should be "Using DHCP".
Click "Apply Now". Shortly, it should refresh and show you numbers for "IP Address", "Subnet Mask", and "Router". If it doesn't update, you may need to click "Renew DHCP Lease".
After OKing that and waiting a few moments, you should see that you're connected. If everything worked as planned, you're now networked!
I wrote this with the intention of saving troubling for the next poor soul who finds themselves in the same situation — if that's you and it's keeping you from better things like spending time with your lover, I hope this helps. YAYZERAMA!!!!
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Thank you!
Thank you sooo much! i tried everything and this finally worked. Appreciate the images also!!!
Many thanks, very useful
The ralink site is down.
You can actually grab it here and there's even a 10.5 version from Dec 08.
http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=3
thank you so much – this post was a lifesaver!!
finally i got my belkin(ralink chip) usb adapter to work, i was stuck on wireless connect utility not thinking about ethernet conn.
thanks a bunch!!
Thanks so much! I thought I had thrown my money down the drain by buying the belkin dongle, but I knew there would be somebody out there who knew what to do. Thankyou!!
I bought a Wireless-N USB adapter from Panda Wireless on Amazon.
It comes with the installation CD which includes drivers for Mac OS X.
Thank you for showing me how to install the driver.
I followed your instructions & cannot get mine to connect. I have Belkin G USB Adapter. Version 3000. It shows there is activity going on but it might once in a while Connect for a second when trying different settings. I'm using Tiger on an old iMac G3. Not sure want to put in for my ipv6 key ? I used Router, IP, etc…
Thanks so much for this!
I got it to work! Thanks! And my Version of Belkin is not even Listed as one that is compatible with the Railink Driver. Very Cool! Now my old iMac is Wireless!
Thank you so much, you are a true Don.
I hope you get all the good karma you deserve
Thanks so much…. Thanks so much…. I was going nuts when I came across with your explanation….. Good luck to you in all your endeavors!!!
does this work for netgear as well?
The downloads from Ralink didn't work for me (Belkin F5D7050 v.3000) on a G4 tower running 10.4.x. Nothing but kernel panics. What did work was downloading the utility/driver from Newer Tech here:
http://www.newertech.com/downloads/maxpower_usb_n.dmg
For whatever reason, that version works perfectly. Its still the Ralink software, but it must be slightly different in some way.
Oh my god. Worst UI ever. Thank you so much! BTW, Leopard does things a little different, instead of clicking "Show", click the "+" at the bottom of the list of devices to add the new device.
thank you so much! soooo helpful!
thx mate
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