Airport card(s) for Power PC G5 and Powerbook G4

Question

I would like to set up an Airport base station to connect my Power PC G5 (dual 2 ghz with 5GB of SDRAM and OS 10.5.8) and my PowerBook G4 (550 Mhz, 512 MB SDRAM and OS 10.4.6). Can someone tell me what combination of base station (Airport Extreme?) and Airport cards would be appropriate for this setup and recommend a supplier, since I suspect cards may be hard to find for these older computers?

Answer 1

I would just add that either card - Airport/Airport extreme will work with any base that supports the 802.11 a/b/g and now n standard - basically all. You can buy an n with an eye toward future upgrades but I use an a/b/g Airport Extreme, several years old that I'm happy with. So, you can look at saving money and getting a generation obsolete if it's just for home. To put it into perspective, the a/b standards were 8 or 9 Mb transfer rate, IIRC, and the g brought it to 54 Mb. Consider the size of network and the size of your ISP "pipe" (ISP data rate) you have.
As far as Airport cards are concerned, the earlier poster is correct. I would just add that there are physical differences between Airport and Airport Extreme cards so they indeed are not interchangeable. The Airport - Powerbook g4 500/550, etc. - uses a card with an end connector, that is, a plastic socket perpendicular to the card which mates to an adapter bracket in the computer. The Airport extreme has an edge connector ("pin" lands right on the edge of the card) which slides right into a socket on the board. Your generation of powerbook would likely use the former (I have a pb g4 500MHz titanium which uses Airport; my pb g4 1.67 GHz uses Extreme).
Go to System Profiler/network/airport and that will tell you if you have a card installed and which one.
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