http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/3083/wua1340mainen9.jpgI 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:

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 "RT2571W/RT2671+RT2500USB" [download mirror] 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!!!!