Adding Airport to Mac Mini G4

Hi all,
I have a simple question about the Mac Mini G4. My girlfriend bought one a few years ago without the Airport card. Is it as easy as buying the card from the Apple store and installing it? Or does this model not support it? I've also saw USB wireless adapters, any of these work with the mini? The store we bought it from didn't give me any solid answers on the subject. Thanks in advance!

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Not that easy I'm afraid. The mini doesn't actually have anywhere to plug an airport card, so if it doesn't already have airport, you have to add the card, a small adapter board, and the antenna. Typically these can be got as part of the full airport and bluetooth kit for around $99, though since the mini isn't user-serviceable, these are not parts that you can buy from Apple. They can sometimes be got via apple service providers (who can fit them too of course) but there are other sources that get them in stock - often briefly. The part number is M9870Z/A and if you Google that, you should find a few suppliers. Watch prices though, because this is a rare item so some charge rather more than the 'proper' price!
As to fitting - it's fiddly and involves a fair bit of disassembly, but with tools, care and patience you can do it yourself. Alternatively, you should be able to get you local authorized service provider to do it, but check how much they'll charge first.
USB adapters aren't a particularly good way to go for a network interface, so personally I wouldn't advise that route. If you look at similar topics here in the recent past, you'll often see it suggested that wiring a wifi bridge to the ethernet port is often suggested instead, and that would certainly be my second option after the internal airport kit.

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ted v-
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Hello,
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For those that might find this thread:
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http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/hardware/optimizingairportconnectivity
http://www.macworld.com/article/60801/2007/11/dec07mobilemac.html
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Fix The Bugs Please wrote:
It is unlikely to be a hardware failure as the Mac Mini was made in May 2014 and I bought factory refurbished. It seems to be an issue relating to the SSD as it boots other drives.
Any ideas?
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C

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well to be honest I wanted a server to run more aspects of what I do privately (rather tahn at work) rather than use hosted accounts from disparate hosted providers on line. In partcular wanted a mail server to handle multiple mail domains, wiki server, web sever as per mail server and I was interested in what they would provide for iphone ipad etc as I have a few that I wanted to link to a server rather than individual macs and pcs
I also thought that Apple might bring their abilities to creating a great UI for essentially linux operating systems to a server os.
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Stefan
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