Apple Mac Mini – Wireless Internet

Mon 12 Feb 2007

Filed Under: Apple Computers 

Connecting a Mac Mini to the internet

Once I configured my set up it was time to connect to the internet.

I run the usual ADSL – broadband connection via a DLINK wireless router. I don’t have access to a regular ethernet ports scattered around the house so I rely on a wireless router to access the internet. The rest of the Windows PCs have wireless cards or Centrino technology (LOL).

My Mac Mini has built in Airport Extreme ! – alias a wireless network card. (And you though Centrino was weird) However connecting to the router was not as easy as the rest of the setup – so far. So here’s my experience. Hope it will help others !

As with Windows opening the web browser called Safari on the Mac will reveal the Internet connect wizard. The key settings are and I input all of them in as displayed. The Mac Mini has a funny option of having to gave a location name. I presume it is so that it can work as a router its self ? Hmmm… don’t know yet so I’ll have a play around with the settings later. Anyway after following the instructions to the letter nothing happened !!

The router and the Mac Mini discovered each other but they decided that they weren’t going to play together.  So you can guess – I wasn’t happy that I had to waste even more time trying to get the thing going.

This was not going to be as easy as setting up the Palm TX which has got to be the benchmark for ease of connecting to a wireless network !

I played around with all the wizard settings and still no avail. Mind you I didn’t have network broadcasting on and a proper network password and DNS settings. Despite all the correct inputs still no connection.

I had a little rest by now as it was getting frustrating. I re-read the manual that came with the Mac but it didn’t reveal anything new or that I hadn’t already tried.

Undeterred I tried a few more things but nothing worked until off chance I tried the setup preferred network option. Volia ! it worked. 1 hour later I was on the Net and looking for updates !

My Mac Mini came default installed with OS X 10.4 and after pressing the update option was presented with at least 500Megs of downloads. Oh well – So after an hour or so downloaded and installed all the updates. Nothing went wrong !

I then installed the other bits of software that came in the box – iLife 06.

So I finally ended with OS X 10.4.4

Comments

Comments are closed.