Cheap Mac Mini 802.11n wireless upgrade – Macbook too…

Ok, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I finally have a set of products that allows you to upgrade your Intel Mac Mini (I have the core 2 duo 1.8ghz) to a reliable wireless n solution.

So I have set up a home network with an Airport Extreme base station and to connect other computers via wireless I Have extended the network with two Airport Express modules. My understanding is that if you have a wireless N network that allows wireless G connections, the instant a G connection is made the entire network is slowed to wireless G speed. Since I use the Mac Mini as a media player (via the most excellent media player package in the entire world – PLEX),  I really need the wireless network to run at full N speed. To that goal I set the Airports to run Wireless N at 5 ghz only (I set up a cheap G router as a bridge for any wireless G people who visit the house). Since the only clients that can connect at 5 ghz are A and N I’m good to go.

First off, I’m not planning on a pictorial for Mac Mini disassembly as the people over at HardMac already have a nice one.

The Ordeal:

• First off I tried adding one of the wireless-n USB sticks. This allowed me to connect with N but the wireless USB sticks only run 2.4Ghz. I was in search of the 5Ghz range so this was not an option
• I ordered the Macbook Pro wireless upgrade card (part number Apple MA688Z/B – Airport Extreme Wireless Upgrade Kit – I picked it up from J&R Music online for $49) . Since the Mini only had one antenna I installed the card with only one antenna connected (On the internet there were many reports that the card would work this way, but at slower speed). After installation the Mini did not recognize the card as 802.11 A/B/G/N (viewed via the Network Utility.app in the Applications/Utilities folder) even though I was using Leopard 10.5.5. So I installed the airport software that came with the Airports. After that the card showed up as a 802.11. A/B/G/N and all was well. The card hooked right up to the network and worked great – for a few minutes. The trouble was that it would drop the network connection every time I loaded the card up with traffic. Whenever it dropped the connection the card would be unable to connect to any network, until I rebooted the system then it would hook up again. Sometimes the card would run for days at a time if I did no more than surf the net a little, but every time I viewed video or played music from my NAS server the Mini would drop off the network.
• I found a blog entry on the net saying that you could use the bluetooth antenna as the second antenna for the MA688Z/B card. Thinking that the second antenna might be an issue, and given that I was not using bluetooth in the Mini I gave that a go. The card displayed all the same issues as before.
• I gave up and put the old card back in, thinking that I could at least hear my music and watch low bitrate video off the server, and I could just copy the high definition videos off the server to the mini whenever I wanted to watch them. No dice. After the drivers were upgraded for the Mini it would not work with the old card again (I didn’t try playing with drivers or configuration files after that since wireless G was not my original goal).
• Since the network card in the Mini (and in most all notebook computers) is a standard Mini PCI card I started to look for non-apple alternatives. I did some research and found one blog entry where the poster said they had success installing a Gigabyte brand card in a Macbook Pro. I did some research and found the Gigabyte GN-W106N-RH. This card is based on the same (or similar) Atheros AR5008 chipset as the Apple MA688Z/B card. In the same research I found that antennas themselves are frequency rated (2.4ghz, 5ghz, or both), which makes sense, but I had not thought about the antennas in the Mini not being optimized or even capable of 5ghz (even though the Mini would not even run the MA688Z/B card at 2.4 g speed successfully). I went looking for a source for the antennas and found Oxfordtec.com.  Since they also had the best price for the Gigabyte mini PCI network card (59.95) I ordered both the card and 3 antennas ($8.95 each) from them (I actually ordered the version with the longer wire, but I think it’s a bit too long so I’m recommending the one above). I installed the Gigabyte card and plugged in the three antennas (I also tried every combination possible using the internal Mini’s antennas – bluetooth and the original network, but neither worked well with 5ghz wireless N). Since the Mini’s case is aluminum (which would block the antenna signal) and I didn’t want to futz about and mess up the cooling flow through the vents in the bottom of the mini, I routed the antennas out the back of the mini through the lower corner hole for the fan vent (the vent hole farthest away from the power button). I turned on the Mini and the card hooked right up. The drivers for the Apple card worked wonderful for the Gigabyte card. Network Utility shows a solid 300 megabit connection and the card runs solid as a rock.

I also had a 2GHZ Macbook (Core 2 non duo) that I wanted to upgrade. That one was a breeze. I followed the directions from HardMac for the upgrade with the Apple card, since I had a spare one from the Mini debacle… ;)  Once again, even though the posters say Leopard had the N drivers built in (maybe if I did a clean install Leopard might have put in the driver for the N card) I still had to run the updater utility from the Airport cards. Since the Macbook had two antenna connections already, no issues with wondering if I needed another one. The Macbook hooked up 5ghz 802.11n and is stable as a rock.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 9:56 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.