All of Apple’s laptops come with a built-in WiFi adapter called an Airport. But I needed a second WiFi port for a client application. I didn’t anticipate any issues with just adding a USB wifi adapter.
However after checking out the three Mac stores in downtown Vancouver, Simply Computing, WestWorld and Mac Market I came up dry. No one even wanted to talk about using a USB wireless adapter on a Mac laptop. The consensus seemed to be it was impossible.
Well fortunately RAlink develops drivers for all their wireless chipsets that enable them to work with Windows, Linux AND Mac! The chipsets are used by a variety of manufactures to build WiFi N USB adapters.Here’s what I did to get the Buffalo WLI-UC-GN Wireless N USB dongle working with OSX 10.5.8, Darwin kernel 9.8.0. It took me a couple of days to get it running. Hopefully this post will help someone else get their Buffalo Wifi adapter running with fewer hassles.
Here’s a related forum thread Insanely Mac Forum Thread. I got the idea for the fix from ayenon – the site is in Japanese, but you can get the main idea by looking at the screen print.
I chose the Buffalo Wireless N USB dongle WLI-UC-GN because it uses the Ralink chipset which is well supported on Macs. And it was on sale for about $40 at NCIX in Vancouver.
I installed the driver, rebooted and plugged the dongle in. The dongle showed up in System Profiler, but the blue activity light on the USB dongle stayed on constantly. On a properly installed dongle the activity light should be flashing. I also got a “No Device” status when I opened the Ralink Utility. The problem boiled down to an incorrect product id in the info.plist file for the device’s driver.
The Buffalo USB dongle uses the Ralink 2870 chipset. (Google “Buffalo WLI-UC-GN chipset”
1. Download the Macintosh drivers version 2.0.1.0 from RAlink Macintosh Drivers. The drivers for for Buffalo WLI-UC-GN are labelled USB(RT2870 /RT2770 /RT307X /RT2070 /RT3572).
2. Plug in the Wifi dongle and verify it is showing up in System Profiler.
Click Apple =>About this Mac => More Info => USB => 802.11n WLAN
Verify that the device is being recognized and has enough current:
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 450
3. Write down the Product ID and Device ID for the WLI-UC-GN, This should be the same for everybody.
Click Apple =>About this Mac => More Info => USB => 802.11n WLAN
The Product ID 0x014f or 335 in decimal
The Device ID 0×0411 or 1041 in decimal
4, Open up /System/Library/Extensions/RT2870USBWirelessDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist using nano and scroll down until you reach the information related to Buffalo.
There are 3 entries 2870-1, 2870-2 and 2870-3.
The Product ID in the third entry needs to be changed from 336 to 335 to match the settings from system profiler above.
Write the file out.
Exit
4. Delete /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
cd /System/Library
sudo rm -R Extensions.mkext
5. Reboot (You should see a message {“Updating Boot Caches”)
6. Remember to boot with the -f parameter.
Important! While the system is loading the blue activity light on the WLI-UC-GN should start flashing. If the light on the dongle stays blue constantly it is not installed correctly.
If the blue light on the dongle is flashing you can go on to the next step.
7. Go into System Preferences and add another device for the USB Wifi dongle.
Apple => System Preferences => Network
Click on the + sign in the lower left. An additional drop down menu entry will appear in the list for “Ethernet”. Highlight it and click create. Click Apply.
8. Go into the Applications => RAlink utility => Site Survey and you should see the Wireless access points.
9. Add a profile for your wireless access point.
10. Open terminal and delete /System/Library/Extensions.mkext again. Reboot again. When the system starts the USB dongle light should be flashing. Open the Ralink Utility and verify that you’re connected. Check the link status. Open Firefox. Enter the URL google.com and verify that you are connected.
In OSX the internal ethernet adapter is usually configured as en0, airport adapter is configured as en1 and your new usb adapter should be en2. After installing the driver correctly you should be able to type “ifconfig en2″ into terminal to find out how the dongle is configured.
Done!