Apple USB Ethernet adapter

Don’t use this adapter on any Mac except the MacBook Air

At least not yet. Here’s why. The Apple USB Ethernet adapter loads just fine but it identifies itself with a BSD Device Name of en0. The problem with this is that your Mac’s built-in ethernet adapter also is identified as en0.

I bought this to be an extra ethernet adapter to use with a Mac mini I’m using as a server. What’s happened is my built-in ethernet is now non-functional. It seems to reset for about a minute then ceases to work. I think what’s happened is my Mac mini now only wants to see en0 as the USB Ethernet adapter and no longer associates en0 with my built-in ethernet. No amount of restarting seems to fix this.

I need to call AppleCare. Hopefully they can fix it and still figure out how to make the Apple USB Ethernet adapter assign a non-utilized BSD Device Name when it’s added in the Network Pref pane.

This entry was written by Andy and posted on February 8, 2008 at 9:19 pm and filed under computer, mac-osx, osx-server. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

4 Comments

  1. Peter Sichel
    Posted February 14, 2008 at 8:29 am | Permalink

    We’ve updated our open source driver to recognize Apple’s USB-to-Ethernet adaptor and have several reports of success getting this adaptor to work on other Macs.

    • Peter Sichel Sustainable Softworks
  2. Darren
    Posted June 6, 2008 at 11:01 am | Permalink

    <p>Worked on a Powerbook G4 running 10.4.11. Needed it since the ethernet port has one contact lifting with age. 900$ to replace the board or 29$ for adapter and free software driver. Apple USB Ethernet Adapter http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB442Z/A&lt;/p&gt;

  3. Jeppe Schäfer
    Posted September 20, 2008 at 5:29 am | Permalink

    I was just wondering… Will Peter Sichel’s USB Ethernet drivers work under leopard Server? I would like to use the USB to Ethernet adaptor from my MacBook Air as an extra interface on a Mac Mini funning OSX 10.5 server. If i plug the adaptor into my iMac i get an extra interface, but the same operation on the mini does absolutely nothing.

  4. Andy
    Posted September 20, 2008 at 9:52 am | Permalink

    Jeppe - I’m quite certain that Peter’s drivers work under Leopard Server as I was using them. I think the real problem you might be having is the Apple USB to Ethernet adapter. I don’t think it will work on anything other than a MacBook Air. You’ll likely have to go to one of the third party adapters.

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