Airport card for iMac G4

[Fullthrottledesigns]

I am looking to get an Airport card for a G4 iMac that I picked up. Where is the best place to buy a good card that isn't overpriced? Is eBay/Craigslist the best option for these cards now?:confused:

[PB PM]

eBay/Craigslist are the only options that I know of to get an actual Apple one. I know there are some third party ones, but then again I've only ever seen them on eBay.

[colivigan]

I have a bunch of old Lucent OEM cards. They're basically unbranded AirPort cards. No guarantee that they'd work in your iMac, but I've had good success using them in clamshell iBooks.

PM me if you're interested.

[kieran]

The original AirPort cards are pretty expensive.

I don't know why, but they just seem to always be expensive when I look for them. I've never needed one, but I had to look for one before when I was thinking of picking up a clamshell iBook and wanted to get an AirPort card for it as well.

Never went through with it because the prices were too expensive for what was just going to be a toy.

[kretara]

You could always get a USB wireless adapter. OWC (macsales.com) sells them in the $40-ish range.

I have an airport card that I can let go for $35 + shipping (~$3 or so).

PM me if you are interested.



*EDIT:
Wow, verifying that I had the airport card within reach reminded me I have a crapload of RAM (pc133), an iBook, a Cube and other stuff just taking up space that I can sell.
Gotta put up a thread in the Bazaar.

[rampancy]

The original AirPort cards are pretty expensive.

I don't know why, but they just seem to always be expensive when I look for them. I've never needed one, but I had to look for one before when I was thinking of picking up a clamshell iBook and wanted to get an AirPort card for it as well.

Never went through with it because the prices were too expensive for what was just going to be a toy.

They've always been pretty rare, and with a lot of people still using older G4-based hardware and G3-based iBooks I'd imagine the demand for them has only risen, hence the price premium they always seem to gather. The cheapest price I've seen them go for is about $49 on craigslist, with the prices being about $59-$99 on various places like Kijiji and eBay. I think that's totally nuts for 802.11b hardware. For Macs with PCI slots it's not so much an issue since RALink- and RealTech-based 802.11g PCI cards are pretty common (and cheap) and they have drivers available for 10.4-10.5.

Sadly, for iMacs and portables, USB seems to be the only way to go. I haven't had any experience with these devices, but from what I hear there's a bug in RALink's USB 802.11g chipset driver which causes issues with reconnecting to wireless networks after waking from sleep/rebooting, requiring unplugging and replugging the device.