Looking for help/suggestion with wireless setup

I'm looking for help and suggestions with respect to setting up a home wireless network. I have cable internet, with a cable modem, hooked up to a (really) old Dell computer that's running Windows 98.

I'm looking for a suggestion as to what wireless router I should get. Here's the catch. I'm also looking for a suggestion as to how to get my G5 Macintosh desktop in the other room hooked up to this network once I get it going. I (stupidly) didn't get a wireless card installed in it when I ordered it a few years ago. Now I'm kicking myself, but I understand that there are USB options, and that sounds ideal to me so I don't have to crack my G5 open. The problem I'm encountering is I can't find many USB wireless cards that say they work for MACs, and I also am curious about the easiest way to set this up so I can get my old ass Dell and my MAC talking through some wireless router.

My brother who I live with also has a laptop, but he's got a wireless card so I'm guessing his computer will pick up any wireless signal easily.

I'm not very adept at the whole wireless thing and this would be my first time trying this out. I appreciate all the help and suggestions I can get.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and offer suggestions.

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Reply to
Pdyx
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On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 21:59:22 -0500, Pdyx wrote in :

What are your priorities? Cost? Performance? Support? How technical and handy are you?

Options other than USB for the Mac:

  1. Powerline networking
  2. Phoneline networking
  3. Coax (TV cable) networking
  4. Wireless Ethernet client bridge (see below)

Depends. What's the distance? What in the way (walls, doors, etc.)? What radio interference exists?

Possible option: Two Linksys WRT54G wireless routers, one as a wireless router, the other with DD-WRT firmware re-configured as a wireless Ethernet client bridge for the Mac.

Reply to
John Navas

How is this set up? Is there an ethernet card in the 98 machine? If so then this should be easy. You'd get a router and connect it to the comcast connection, between it and the 98 machine. But you'd need to describe how your existing setup is configured.

Buffalo, Linksys, even Apple's gear would work fine. They're all more or less the same these days.

-Bill Kearney

Reply to
Bill Kearney

On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 06:57:35 -0500, "Bill Kearney" wrote in :

Significant differences in my experience: Buffalo is very good, but currently banned from the USA. Linksys is decent. Apple is very good.

Reply to
John Navas

How old is really old? Is it win 98 first edition or second? (old dell's that only had the original win98 and not win98se usually didn't support usb or wireless)

Reply to
Peter Pan

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