Cheapest Wifi Solution to Hackintosh. Only $13. + Airdrop in Lion 10.7.2

Well consider this: The main Wifi chip I found to work 100% with Lion 10.7.2 is only $7.75. This is great news for laptop users, if you can swap out your miniPCIe WiFi card out to this cheap alternative, go for it. The drivers are available below. Here’s how, and how much I personally ended up spending for my WiFi solution for my Hackintosh. 🙂

Hardware:
MiniPCI-E Wireless Lan 802.11N Adapter only $7.25 w/o shipping + no tax

MiniPCI-E to PCIe 1x adapter only $5.99 w/o shipping + no tax

TOTAL COST:

$13.24 w/o shipping

Software: Found here  ***** The extension is .jpg Remember to right click the link and save as onto your desktop. Please rename the extension to .zip, this was done because WordPress does not allow .zip files to be uploaded onto the blog so I faked it an image format. rename to .zip or it won’t work*****

Directions:

1. Mount the .DMG file

2. Install the package contents in the 10.5 folder (Yes this will work on Lion 10.7.2 as well, at least for me it did…)

3. Restart

4. Copy: “WirelessUtilityCardbusPCI.app” into your applications folder and use this utility not the one that was installed by the package contents in the /Applications/Ralink Wireless Utility Folder.

5. Enoy
DETAILS: These drivers are for the RT3090 chip by RALink. The miniPCIe chip was purchased from mono price.

Thanks To:

Tonymac for supplying an environment for us hackintosh users to communicate. His forum is priceless.

Comosus (me)

Rals2007 for indicating how the new utility app is a bit whack. He uploaded the old one in a previous thread.

Problems with the NEW Wireless utility that comes in the .pkg from the .DMG provided(that I personally had… and the reason I suggest use the old one supplied in the attachment):

I could not connect or add a profile in the wireless utility program for some reason. It made no sense, because everything was working, except me being able to tell it to connect. No error was given nothing. I could see my network, I could see my antenna is on, I could refresh, I could gather the SSID of my network, but when I click connect, absolutely nothing happens. If I don’t highlight the network I want to connect to and click “add”, then it prompts me an error “nothing is selected”. Very frustrating.

Use the old installer and it should fix this problem if you too are experiencing it. Thanks rals2007

Outcome:
Once the device is set and ready to go, you may have to add the device in your network preference pane to enable it. Just press the Plus icon bottom left under the left column listing your network devices. It is detected as an ethernet port, not a wireless card because the card is not managed by OSX utility, but rather RALink’s crappy utility.

for the icing on the cake…..
Enabling AirDrop

source: [link]

There is a workaround that will enable the use of AirDrop not only over non-supported wireless connections, but also by Macs connected in a wired Ethernet network.

Directions
Turning on AirDrop capabilities for all networks is relatively simple; all that’s needed is a bit of Terminal magic to make the changes.

1. Launch Terminal, located at /Applications/Utilities.

2. At the Terminal command prompt, enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces 1

3. Once you type or copy/paste the command into Terminal, press enter or return.

4. The type the following in terminal

killall Finder

*** To ever disable this feature:

1. At the Terminal command prompt, enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces 0

2…and then

killall Finder
Last bit of Info:

You don’t have to specifically have to have the RALink’s RT3090 chipset for these drivers to work. Check out their website here: and download the drivers you need according to your chip. Use the old utility .app if need be, because it turns out that utility is not only used for the RT1090 chip that I have.

Also if you are like me, trying to make a HTMC hackintosh with a mITX or mATC form factor that only has 1 16x PCIe slot, then good news: you can use the 1x adapter in the 16x slot and it will work properly. You will be having to use integrated graphics however (HD300 I assume) from you i-core sanybridge. 🙂 otherwise you’ll have to seek a cheap USB alternative WiFi solution. NOTE: The PCI 1x adapter MAY NOT WORK ON SLI motherboards in a 16x slot.
Let me know if any of you guys try any of this out! Love to hear feedback.