Installing Generic USB Wifi Dongle to OSX

802.11n WLAN Adapter: Product ID: 0x8176 Vendor ID: 0x0bda (Realtek Semiconductor Corp.) Version: 2.00 Serial Number: 00e04c000001 Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec Manufacturer: 802.11n WLAN Adapter Location ID: 0xfd500000 / 4 Current Available (mA): 500 Current Required (mA): 500

I use an Realtek based noname USB WIFI Stick: 802.11n WLAN Adapter: BSD-Name: en1 Produkt-ID: 0x8176 (RTL8188CUS chip) Hersteller-ID: 0x0bda (Realtek Semiconductor Corp.) Version: 2,00 Seriennummer: 00e04c000001 Geschwindigkeit: Bis zu 480 MBit/s Hersteller: Realtek The realtek drivers (comes with an Wifi Util that runs on startup) works with Lion 64 Bit 10.7.2 C40. Realtec supports OS X good (fast updates).

Answers

OK I got it to work. I Googled RTL8188CUS (from the post I found above) the name of the chip and came to a driver from 2011 which passed a virus scan, installed, rebooted and worked fine!

Edit: Anyone else reading this, you might find the Wifi doesn't work until the utility loads after you log in. I found that this helped.

square_eyes

Posted 2014-12-03T23:52:00.203

Reputation: 300

There's a 2.01 driver on the the Realtek sight. I wouldn't have expected any of these to be signed, predating Mavericks. Have you disabled kext signing verification? – user187561 – 2014-12-04T02:04:11.173

ftp://WebUser:Lc9FuH5r@23.251.207.30/cn/wlan/Wlan_11n_USB_MacOS10.8_Driver_UI_2.0.1.zip OS X 10.8 driver version 2.0.1. – user187561 – 2014-12-04T02:10:38.540

By that you mean Allow apps downloaded from: section in Security and Privacy - Set to Anywhere? – square_eyes – 2014-12-04T03:06:50.567

No. You have an osx-yosemite tag. Yosemite by default checks signatures of kext bundles, and refuses to load kexts that aren't signed. It can be turned off with a boot argument. – user187561 – 2014-12-04T03:37:15.877

To my knowledge I never did that. It's OSX 10.10.1. Is there a check I can do to see if I inadvertently set that to off at some other point? I'm comfortable in Terminal. – square_eyes – 2014-12-04T03:50:16.723

There's the command line command in a terminal nvram boot-args. If it returns something along the lines of 'nvram: Error getting variable - 'boot-args'' then kext signing checking hasn't been disabled. If it returns something containing 'kext-dev-mode=1' kext signing checking has been disabled. – user187561 – 2014-12-04T08:29:21.033

1It turns out there's at least one Realtek kext signed by InsanelyMac. – user187561 – 2014-12-04T09:02:27.757

Strange that this driver you posted, and I'm guessing the one I found, doesn't connect the Wifi dongle until you have logged in and the utility loads. I don't suppose you know a way around that? I guess I could have it auto log in, but that's not very secure. – square_eyes – 2014-12-05T11:54:17.740

I found this which I will try http://lifehacker.com/5779922/make-os-x-load-your-desktop-before-you-log-in

– square_eyes – 2014-12-05T11:56:58.877

Its very unlikely you will get it to work since you don't have a OS X driver for it. – Ramhound – 2014-12-03T23:52:57.890

Could I try a few other OSX realtek drivers? Or am I wasting my time? – square_eyes – 2014-12-03T23:58:10.140

Searching Realtek's Downloads Search shows there isn't anything newer than 10.8 supported. At the very least (and if the driver functioned) it would require you disable kext signature verification at boot time.

– user187561 – 2014-12-04T01:28:50.173

OK doesn't look good then. For what it's worth I actually just found the driver disk in a box. It looks like it's only got windows drivers though. Oh no, it's got some Mac files in here CardbusPCIWireless-10.3,10.4, 10.5 and 10.6. – square_eyes – 2014-12-04T01:31:47.903