topic Re: Mac incompatible with Wi-fi mini portal in Archived Posts

Mac incompatible with Wi-fi mini portal

Boxsterboy — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 15:57:22 GMT

My MacBook Air recently upgraded to Catalina 10.15.2 and wants to move on to 10.15.5.

I already get a message saying the Wi-fi mini portal is incompatible with current 64 bit requirement and I can only access it through a repeater, adding another interface. The response rate is very slow - 795Mb download took over 5 hours from 23:00 last night! What suggestions, anyone? Please !

Re: Mac incompatible with Wi-fi mini portal

XRaySpeX — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 17:21:49 GMT

@Boxsterboy : It's irrelevant what the architecture, 32-bit or 64-bit, is of the devices connecting to a mobile router. They only communicate at a networking packet level.

Re: Mac incompatible with Wi-fi mini portal

Boxsterboy — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 22:19:19 GMT

Thank you for that, not entirely sure what 'communicate at a network packet level' means. Unless that is so slow as to be almost useless. I have been unable to connect since my original post,

Screen shot shows the message I am getting and in the Dock at the bottom right of the screen is the icon for the portal with a 'Prohibited' symbol overlaid. Does it mean nothing? Why can't I connect? An old Samsung laptop connects instantly as do mobile phones. (You will see that any 10 year old knows more than me about this sort of thing.)

Re: Mac incompatible with Wi-fi mini portal

XRaySpeX — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 22:44:08 GMT

Ah, it's talking about the software EE has loaded on your PC from the mobile router to access it, not the router itself. This s/ware is not really necessary. You should be able to connect directly to the router using the network connections facilities of your PC. We Windows users can.

Re: Mac incompatible with Wi-fi mini portal

Boxsterboy — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 21:31:38 GMT

Thanks again, XRaySpex; I didn’t realise that the router had installed any software! That makes sense, but I still have the problem of a very slow download speed and if 795Mb took 5 hours in the middle of the night imagine what time the next iOS upgrade will take at 4.75Gb. Add that to constant drop-outs (a recent Zoom meeting dropped 14 times in 1 hour) and you can see why I am getting somewhat disillusioned/frustrated. We are only 5miles out of Inverness but landline is copper/aluminium and is 7miles to exchange with lots of it on top of grass verges and recently a great coil of it hanging on a fence. All mobile masts locally point to Inverness - not our way! I think our signal comes from Mount Eagle transmitter on the Black Isle, or possibly Rosemarkie, ditto, but we are surrounded by trees here. Perhaps one day we'll join the 20th, if not the 21st, century!

Thanks for your patience, stay safe.