4

I purchased an old Mac Pro to use as a home server. It has no WiFi card.

I have a generic Wireless N USB dongle. I got it a long time ago and it's not branded. Windows installs the drivers automatically so I never put much thought into it.

System report in OSX tells me the below...

802.11n WLAN Adapter:

  Product ID:   0x8176
  Vendor ID:    0x0bda  (Realtek Semiconductor Corp.)
  Version:  2.00
  Serial Number:    00e04c000001
  Speed:    Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer: 802.11n WLAN Adapter
  Location ID:  0xfd500000 / 4
  Current Available (mA):   500
  Current Required (mA):    500

What chances do I have of getting it running? It's not showing as a network in the Network settings.

Edit:

I found the driver disk and it has drivers up to 10.6. Also I found a post here which seems to say that it has worked on Lion. Copied below...

I use an Realtek based noname USB WIFI Stick:

802.11n WLAN Adapter:

BSD-Name: en1
Produkt-ID: 0x8176 (RTL8188CUS chip)
Hersteller-ID: 0x0bda (Realtek Semiconductor Corp.)
Version: 2,00
Seriennummer: 00e04c000001
Geschwindigkeit: Bis zu 480 MBit/s
Hersteller: Realtek

The realtek drivers (comes with an Wifi Util that runs on startup) works with Lion 64 Bit 10.7.2 C40.
Realtec supports OS X good (fast updates).
square_eyes
  • 320
  • 1
  • 4
  • 16
  • Its very unlikely you will get it to work since you don't have a OS X driver for it. – Ramhound Dec 03 '14 at 23:52
  • Could I try a few other OSX realtek drivers? Or am I wasting my time? – square_eyes Dec 03 '14 at 23:58
  • Searching Realtek's [Downloads Search](http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/searchView.aspx?keyword=RTL8188) shows there isn't anything newer than 10.8 supported. At the very least (and if the driver functioned) it would require you disable kext signature verification at boot time. –  Dec 04 '14 at 01:28
  • OK doesn't look good then. For what it's worth I actually just found the driver disk in a box. It looks like it's only got windows drivers though. Oh no, it's got some Mac files in here `CardbusPCIWireless-10.3,10.4, 10.5 and 10.6`. – square_eyes Dec 04 '14 at 01:31

1 Answers1

4

OK I got it to work. I Googled RTL8188CUS (from the post I found above) the name of the chip and came to a driver from 2011 which passed a virus scan, installed, rebooted and worked fine!

Edit: Anyone else reading this, you might find the Wifi doesn't work until the utility loads after you log in. I found that this helped.

square_eyes
  • 320
  • 1
  • 4
  • 16
  • There's a 2.01 driver on the the Realtek sight. I wouldn't have expected any of these to be signed, predating Mavericks. Have you disabled kext signing verification? –  Dec 04 '14 at 02:04
  • ftp://WebUser:Lc9FuH5r@23.251.207.30/cn/wlan/Wlan_11n_USB_MacOS10.8_Driver_UI_2.0.1.zip OS X 10.8 driver version 2.0.1. –  Dec 04 '14 at 02:10
  • By that you mean `Allow apps downloaded from:` section in `Security and Privacy` - Set to `Anywhere`? – square_eyes Dec 04 '14 at 03:06
  • No. You have an osx-yosemite tag. Yosemite by default checks signatures of kext bundles, and refuses to load kexts that aren't signed. It can be turned off with a boot argument. –  Dec 04 '14 at 03:37
  • To my knowledge I never did that. It's OSX 10.10.1. Is there a check I can do to see if I inadvertently set that to off at some other point? I'm comfortable in Terminal. – square_eyes Dec 04 '14 at 03:50
  • There's the command line command in a terminal `nvram boot-args`. If it returns something along the lines of 'nvram: Error getting variable - 'boot-args'' then kext signing checking hasn't been disabled. If it returns something containing 'kext-dev-mode=1' kext signing checking has been disabled. –  Dec 04 '14 at 08:29
  • 1
    It turns out there's at least one Realtek kext signed by InsanelyMac. –  Dec 04 '14 at 09:02
  • Strange that this driver you posted, and I'm guessing the one I found, doesn't connect the Wifi dongle until you have logged in and the utility loads. I don't suppose you know a way around that? I guess I could have it auto log in, but that's not very secure. – square_eyes Dec 05 '14 at 11:54
  • I found this which I will try http://lifehacker.com/5779922/make-os-x-load-your-desktop-before-you-log-in – square_eyes Dec 05 '14 at 11:56