I have had to get an external wireless adaptor for my 3-year old MacBook Pro (long story) and grabbed a S$69 Prolink WN2100 from the IT Co-op at YIH at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Mac OS X support is indicated on the box but no more mention is made of it thereafter, either there or on the Prolink support pages. That’s not unusual but after I plugged in the USB device into my MacBook Pro, nothing happened which WAS unusual. So I figured a driver that post-dated my OS was required and eventually sorted it out.
During that process, I found no other user experience online so I’m posting this for the next macaddict hunting the net in a similar situation in future. I sent the Prolink support staff these instructions by email when I realised they were unfamiliar with macs. Hopefully this will be added to their FAQ pages.
I am still on OS X 10.5.6 and am not sure if this would be needed in 10.5.7. But suffice to say, if you stick a Prolink WN2100 into your mac’s USB port and nothing happens, try this:
- Download the OS X drivers (10.3 – 10.5) from the relevant Prolink downloads page.
- Unzip, run the relevant installer and restart your mac as prompted.
- AFTER the restart, plug the WN2100 in to your USB port — the “USB Wireless Utility” window will appear (note: if the WN2100 unit is already plugged in, the utility window will not appear, leaving you as stumped as I was, briefly.
- In the “Site Survey” tab, locate your network, select it and click “Connect” at the bottom of the window.
- You will be prompted to open the System Preferences> Network window, where you will see a “USB Ethernet (en3)” service now listed (you can rename this).
- The network configuration should have been automatically inserted, so just click “Apply” at the bottom right and close the window.
