Help: Installing a usb wifi on a Mac OS 9

[jbl]

Hi,

A friend of mine asked for my help in installing a usb wifi on his imac desktop running Mac OS 9. Thinking that it would be as simple as installing one on a windows machine I gave him a hand. When I plugged in the device it prompted that there is no available driver for the device and ask if I want to search for a driver on the internet, i tried searching for it in the internet but failed and no drivers was found. I have the drivers on a CD but I'm unable to run it, the .exe file would not run.

How would I install this driver? I can't find (if it has one) the "Device Manager" similar to windows where I can see all devices and update its driver. The .exe files on the CD would not run and when I check the details on the CD under the "Kind" column it recognizes the .exe files as Text Document. BTW I'm installing a cdrking USB wireless lan.

Hope somebody can help me here. TIA.

[penmanila]

you can't run an .exe file on a pre-intel mac because it's a windows file, not a mac file. that driver won't work for OS 9. the problem with OS 9 (which i used and liked a lot, otherwise) is that it's very driver-specific; no driver, no go. OS 9 was on its way out when USB came in, and every USB device had to have an OS 9 driver. today, most manufacturers don't bother writing OS 9 drivers, because it's an obsolete OS, so your friend may be out of luck.

i did have good luck with a d-link DWL-122 USB wifi adaptor that i used with my old G3 imac. but first i upgraded the machine to OS X, then installed the drivers. you can read about upgrading the imac to OS X on www.lowendmac.com (it's a bit tricky, since you have to upgrade the firmware first or you risk losing your video).

[jbl]

Thanks for the info Penmanila, I was enlightened with that. Although the driver that came with the device is said to be mac compatible there is still an exception with OS 9. The folder named under the mac driver is OS 10.x.x, so guess we have to settle with a wired connection. And there's no chance also for him to install a webcam. Thanks for the heads up to on the upgrade, but I think I wouldn't try to tinker on it coz it's not mine and might mess things up.