[GLLUG] Anyone with experience with Macs and AirPort Extreme?

[Michael George]

I'm scouring the internet and I've not yet found a solution to my problem.
 I'm thinking that something might be wrong with my Mac rather than bad
configuration, but everything else works fine...

My situation: I bought a used Mac Mini Intel Core 2 Duo last fall with OS
X.5 (leopard) on it.  It seems to work fine and I've had it on my network
with (wired) ethernet since then.

I want to move that computer up to the living room, where I don't have any
ethernet jacks.  I thought I'd use the wireless on my dd-wrt powered
Linksys WRT54GL.  My iBook with an original AirPort card connects with
almost no effort from effort anywhere in the house (G3, OS X.4), so I
think I have that part working fine.

When I turn on the AirPort card in the Mini, it will scan for networks and
find my wireless network.  It doesn't give me any options for choosing WPA
(TKIP) and just asks for a password.  I give it the correct password and
it says that the connection times out and it doesn't connect.  I turned
off the security and power cycled the AirPort subsystem.  It came up with
my network again and I selected it to join (no password required) and it
still suffered a connection timeout.

The Mini reports it's wireless card as an AirPort Extreme (802.11n), but I
thought it was backward-compatible to 802.11b/g (which is what the WRT54GL
is).  Does anyone have experience with this type of situation?

Are there any reliable USB 802.11b/g devices on the market?

Thanks!

-Michael George