WiFi for older machine

I have a 466 mhz G4 (digital-audio model) that still meets all my needs. I'd like to be able to connect to the internet via the household WiFi router. Airport cards for this machine are surprisingly expensive on eBay. I've been wondering about alternatives.
I thought of getting an airport base station -- maybe a "Snow." I don't need a lot of speed. They're surprisingly cheap on eBay.
I'm wondering if an Airport base station will handshake and "talk with" my generic 802.11g WiFi router, connected to the DSL. If so, is that hard to configure?
If this will work, it would save me the expense of an internal Airport card.
Thanks in advance,
Tim
466 MHZ G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

What a wonderful profusion of answers. Thanks to all. I gave "helpfuls" and a "solved" as fairly as I could.
I guess there's no simple answer to this question. I'll have to wing it and hope for the best. At least I know not to try to get a "Snow" base station to communicate with another wifi router. I was thinking it's possible to daisy chain wireless routers, but come to think of it, I think you do that with wireless cards, not wireless routers.
I've bought many items on eBay over the years, way more than 100. Never had a fraud problem. When I consider the amount of money I've saved, I suppose I could suffer a fraud now and then, and still come out ahead.
I suppose I'll try a USB wifi device first. If it works, I'll probably get a USB 2.0 PCI card.
Cheers,
Tim
466 MHZ G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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You can bridge the TC and plug it into whatever wireless router you buy.
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Just post again if you need specifics.. but I need specifics to give them!!

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Data Storage Platforms; their Drawbacks & Advantages
#1. Time Machine / Time Capsule
Drawbacks:
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2. Time machine is controlled by complex software, and while you can delve into the TM backup database for specific file(s) extraction, this is not ideal or desirable.
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5. Time Machine does not keep endless copies of changed or deleted data, and you are often not notified when it deletes them; likewise you may accidently delete files off your computer and this accident is mirrored on TM.
6. Restoring from TM is quite time intensive.
7. TM is a backup and not a data archive, and therefore by definition a low-level security of vital/important data.
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12. TM like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
13. *Level-1 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. TM is very easy to use either in automatic mode or in 1-click backups.
2. TM is a perfect novice level simplex backup single-layer security save against internal HD failure or corruption.
3. TM can easily provide a seamless no-gap policy of active data that is often not easily capable in HD clones or HD archives (only if the user is lazy is making data saves).
#2. HD archives
Drawbacks:
1. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
2. Unless the user ritually copies working active data to HD external archives, then there is a time-gap of potential missing data; as such users must be proactive in archiving data that is being worked on or recently saved or created.
Advantages:
1. Fills the gap left in a week or 2-week-old HD clone, as an example.
2. Simplex no-software data storage that is isolated and autonomous from the computer (in most cases).
3. HD archives are the best idealized storage source for storing huge and multi-terabytes of data.
4. Best-idealized 1st platform redundancy for data protection.
5. *Perfect primary tier and level-2 security of your vital data.
#3. HD clones (see below for full advantages / drawbacks)
Drawbacks:
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2. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
Advantages:
1. HD clones are the best, quickest way to get back to 100% full operation in mere seconds.
2. Once a HD clone is created, the creation software (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) is no longer needed whatsoever, and unlike TM, which requires complex software for its operational transference of data, a HD clone is its own bootable entity.
3. HD clones are unconnected and isolated from recent corruption.
4. HD clones allow a “portable copy” of your computer that you can likewise connect to another same Mac and have all your APPS and data at hand, which is extremely useful.
5. Rather than, as many users do, thinking of a HD clone as a “complimentary backup” to the use of TM, a HD clone is superior to TM both in ease of returning to 100% quickly, and its autonomous nature; while each has its place, TM can and does fill the gap in, say, a 2 week old clone. As an analogy, the HD clone itself is the brick wall of protection, whereas TM can be thought of as the mortar, which will fill any cracks in data on a week, 2-week, or 1-month old HD clone.
6. Best-idealized 2nd platform redundancy for data protection, and 1st level for system restore of your computers internal HD. (Time machine being 2nd level for system restore of the computer’s internal HD).
7. *Level-2 security of your vital data.
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)
3. Disk utility HD bootable clone.
#4. Online archives
Drawbacks:
1. Subject to server failure or due to non-payment of your hosting account, it can be suspended.
2. Subject, due to lack of security on your part, to being attacked and hacked/erased.
Advantages:
1. In case of house fire, etc. your data is safe.
2. In travels, and propagating files to friends and likewise, a mere link by email is all that is needed and no large media needs to be sent across the net.
3. Online archives are the perfect and best-idealized 3rd platform redundancy for data protection.
4. Supremely useful in data isolation from backups and local archives in being online and offsite for long-distance security in isolation.
5. *Level-1.5 security of your vital data.
#5. DVD professional archival media
Drawbacks:
1. DVD single-layer disks are limited to 4.7Gigabytes of data.
2. DVD media are, given rough handling, prone to scratches and light-degradation if not stored correctly.
Advantages:
1. Archival DVD professional blank media is rated for in excess of 100+ years.
2. DVD is not subject to mechanical breakdown.
3. DVD archival media is not subject to ferromagnetic degradation.
4. DVD archival media correctly sleeved and stored is currently a supreme storage method of archiving vital data.
5. DVD media is once written and therefore free of data corruption if the write is correct.
6. DVD media is the perfect ideal for “freezing” and isolating old copies of data for reference in case newer generations of data become corrupted and an older copy is needed to revert to.
7. Best-idealized 4th platform redundancy for data protection.
8. *Level-3 (highest) security of your vital data.
[*Level-4 data security under development as once-written metallic plates and synthetic sapphire and likewise ultra-long-term data storage]
#6. Cloud based storage
Drawbacks:
1. Cloud storage can only be quasi-possessed.
2. No genuine true security and privacy of data.
3. Should never be considered for vital data storage or especially long-term.
4. *Level-0 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. Quick, easy and cheap storage location for simplex files for transfer to keep on hand and yet off the computer.
2. Easy source for small-file data sharing.

My 320GB external drive for Time Machine now only has enough capacity to keep a backup of one day. All my other backups are gone. What can I do to fix this situation?

I've been using a 320GB external drive for time machine for the last several years. The backups always worked fine and when necessary I was able to look at & restore older data from the time capsule. Recently, I keep getting the message that a backup cannot be completed and an older backup will be deleted. Usually this wasn't an issue because I still had several months of information on disk. Now a one-time backup takes up 315GB and therefore I only have a backup of the previous day. I don't understand this because I thought that the backup only saves information that has changed and doesn't copy everything everytime. What do I need to do to get my backups to a reasonable size so that I can keep at least 1 month data stored on it.? Please don't tell me I need a larger drive ... that would be too easy.

Get a larger drive for your TM backups.
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MDT Console with more then 15 machines, How to use the same drivers for more machines.

Hello,
I'm am looking for a solution to make our MDT design as effective as possible(as small as posible).
The Situation:
The company has more then 15 different computers added to the MDT console for the automated installation of Windows 7. The installations are done in 2 different ways, 1 with a local USB key installation (with the deployment folder on the USB key) and the other
installation is a network USB key installation (with the deployment folder on the server).
The local USB key exists for offices in parts of the world where the internet connection is poor.
The problem:
We have machines which can use the same driver for different kinds of hardware functions (LAN, WLAN, etc..)
If we add a new machine to the MDT and we don't check the box for "Import drivers even if they are duplicates of an existing driver" we will automatic use the driver which already exists in the deployment folder. If say half a year
later we stop using an older machine which "may" have drivers that are being used for other machines and we delete the machine from MDT we should
NOT check the box "Completely delete these items, even if there are copies in other folders". The problem is that this can also lead to a lot of unused drivers in the deployment folder also because we do not know exactly how many
computers are using a certain driver.
At the moment we have another deployment share with for each machine its own drivers installed (so some drivers will be multiple times in the deployment folder) as you can guess this becomes really big.(deployment folder of more then 24 GB). The advantage
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Is there not an option within MDT that checks automatically if the drivers connected to a certain machine in MDT are being used by other machines? In this case we would check the box "Completely delete these items, even if there are copies in other folders"
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Greets,
Arie

Arie,
I think you are over-complicating this. Basically using drivers that already exist is the way to go. Otherwise drivers will be imported a second, third or fourth time. Which also takes up allot of disk space. If you're concerned about driver management,
then I would suggest to drop your concerns, since there is nothing to less you can do about this particular issue. As long as you don't delete the driver that's been imported earlier by another machine there is nothing to worry.
Ask yourself:
- how long am I going to support model x
- how many times do I want to update drivers
With selection profiles you can easily target which content needs to go where (on your USB drive of-course)
I can imagine that managing 25 shares for 25 different models, just because you 'refuse' to have old drivers in your share, or have removed support for some hardware models, isn't really time and energy efficient too.
If you take a look in your deploymentshare\control folders you will see some XML files. These XML files hold all the entries in your deploymentshare. So your drivers.xml and drivergroups.xml (depending on the number of groups you have) are going to be very
big XML files. These XML files are read by MDT to identify the objects in MDT and under which folder the objects are located.
It's not possible to create or have an dependency between driver files and hardware models, other then creating groups under "Out-of-box Drivers" and using selection profiles.
Another suggestion would be to decrease your number of hardware models drastically. On the other hand, having 25 Gb of offline media isn't really a big deal either. Portable and removable media of those sizes (32 and 64 Gb) isn't that expensive as it used
to be 5 years ago.
Don't get me wrong, I perfectly understand your desire to manage this, but MDT doesn't provide any other way, then the things I have pointed out to you here.
Good luck! :)
If this post is helpful please click "Mark for answer", thanks! Kind regards

Can I use a USB drive with the Airport extreme (not the new one) for Time Machine?

I thought I heard that using USB drive for Time Machine over wifi will work with the new, tall Airport Extreme, but not with the previous model, which I have. Anybody know for sure?
thanks.

It is not recommended.. Apple says it doesn't work.. for some people it does for others it is unreliable.. do you really want unreliable backups.
See http://pondini.org/TM/Airport.html

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Before doing the above steps I downloaded the Lion Recovery Disc Assistant and created an external Recovery HD using an 8GB flash drive. I used this as startup destination by choosing it as boot destination from pressing Option before startup. I tried using Mac OS X Utilities to Reinstall Mac OS X from the external drive but I only get "Could not find installation information for this machine." message. I also tried booting from the Recovery HD partition on the HD but i also get the same message.
I have a new iMac that came with OS X Lion 10.7.
Anybody have idea how to fix this?

Partitioning on-the-fly may fail if the disk is too fragmented. You cannot run Erase for the internal disk as it contains its system components. The same if trying to run Boot Camp in order to create the Windows partition, it may fail if disk is too fragmented.
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carl wolf wrote:
The newer higher capacity batteries use a different chemistry than the older batteries. There is no real reason that Apple couldn't replace the current battery chemistry with the newer one. However, I wouldn't expect it to happen for another year.
Not quite true. The OP's issue is with battery life, not battery lifespan. The slightly modified chemistry (they are still lithium polymer batteries, so the basic chemistry is the same) and the adaptive charging on the new batteries account for the lifespan of 1000 charge cycles vs. 300-400 charge cycles.
However, the increased battery life (i.e. run time on a full charge) is higher with the new batteries simply because they are physically bigger - 40% bigger, according to Apple. The newer, internal batteries are larger due, in part, to the fact that they are non-removable, meaning space formerly taken up by the battery case and latching mechanism can now be used for the battery itself.
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WEP password for Windows machine

Hi to all,
Okay, got two refurbed airport express units from apple yesterday. I set them up in WDS mode and both my iMac and ibook are connected and working well. My wife tries to connect to the wireless network and it asks for the WEP password. I enter the password that I set up for the connection but this does not work. It is prompting me for a much larger password. Where can I find this password?
Thanks!
Greg

Glenn900, et al,
Thanks for your prompt response, but unfortunately I am not following these instructions very well. I am using WDS, which means that I have two basestation choices within the Airport Admin utility. One is the basestation, the other is the relay basestation. Which one do I double click? Assuming I click on the basestation, I get a large window that comes up with different categories:
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I got this Could not find installation information for this machine. what i should do now? i can not use my mac, i got this Could not find installation information for this machine. what i should do now? i can not use my mac

i erased my mac then i tried to download the os x mavericks, wich i had before ; however, i got this Could not find installation information for this machine.

You should not have erased anything. Maverick uses some of the applications from the older software and now that you have erased part of the Operating System you are going to need the Original Install disc's that came with your machine. Hold down the C key while installing then do all of the Software updates then you can install Maverick.

Time Machine AFP shares for client machines

I have migrated a Mac Mini from 10.6 Server to 10.7 Server. This is my own internal mail server etc so it is not too critical.
I have a DROBO connected to the mini and the DROBO has been partitioned into 4 partitions. Three of the partitions are shares which I used for the Time Machine (TM) backups on my MBP, my wife's iMac and the mini server. The fourth partition was for shared files. All this worked well in 10.6 but it seems broken with 10.7. I did this so I could limit how much space was available for each client machine's TM backup.
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Well, it appears to be working. I used the "Connect To Server" option from the "Go" menu of the Finder and connected via IP address. The Mini is set up with a static IP. I'm not sure if it is working consistently, yet. I got one good Time Machine backup so far.
I do seem to be experiencing some inconsistent network behavior as far as seeing the Mini on the network via my Lion machines. It seems to drop off the Finder sidebar for no apparent reason. Will post another update later.

WiFi for older machine

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