Alfa AWUS036H/RTL8187L on OSX 10.6

The drivers on the Alfa site only support up to OSX 10.5.  I found various blogs, which were all EXACT copies of each other and none of which worked.

Eventually stumbled this article which got me close.

This post will just extend that blog with the things I found.

1. Download the 10.5 driver from the Alfa download site
2. Install, ignore the corrupt warning & reboot
3. Open a terminal and type :
   

sudo kextutil /System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext

Notice: /System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext has debug properties set.
/System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext has problems:
Authentication Failures:
File owner/permissions are incorrect (must be root:wheel, nonwritable by group/other):
/System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext/Contents/Resources
/System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext/Contents/Resources/English.lproj
/System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/InfoPlist87l.strings
4. You now need to :

sudo chmod go-w [The File]

eg : 

sudo chmod go-w /System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext/Contents/Resources
sudo chmod go-w /System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext/Contents/Resources/English.lproj
sudo chmod go-w /System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/InfoPlist87l.strings

Now this is where it goes a little off piste.  Following the reference article you should now just run the Realtech util and off you go.  For me that didn't work and the app wouldn't even run.

I restarted again and ran :

sudo kextutil /System/Library/Extensions/RTL8187l.kext

It reported no file permission errors but at the same time I was both prompted with OSX's "found a new network interface" and the RealTech app launched and allowed me to configure the NIC.

UPDATE 12/11/2012 : These drivers are 32bit.  Apple has removed the ability to do anything in 32bit with the Mountain Lion release.  So far I can't find anyway to get the 8187L working on ML. <sad face>