Ok so I have been inspired since defcon about the wireless I am currently running a Linksys Router at home which I loaded with Open WRT the linux distro of the firmware, and I have found that I can amplify the signal. Anyways I was curious if anyone has found a wait to increase the range of the ibook or powerbook, probably more exactly an Airport Extreme Card. Just curious if Anyone has seen any links about it.

I dont have any links, but I do have an idea. You will need to modify your case. Drill a small
hole in the side of the case and extend the card input to the hole. Then you can plug in
an external antenna. Im not sure where to get the parts, but I will look around.
-maestro

Sorry Did some searching and kinda answered my own question I'm not sure how this work but I am planning on buying one so I will let you know how well it works. here is a link

http://www.quickertek.com/products.html#ibook55

Not sure on how far a range on a 5.5 dbi will boost but I'm sure it couldn't hurt.

http://sharperconcepts.zoovy.com/

I used them for my antenna and pigtail for my router. They have all the parts for the airport as well.

OpenWRT is a great firmware, but I love DD-WRT. You can boost the signal to 251mw, though that may be a bit much.

To get on topic, I've never seen any software mods to adjust the receive range on an AirPort card. I looked around, and it stinks that you would have to use the bulky external antenna mod, though maybe you should find a project in making the antenna more tastful looking.

Something that you could do, which is unorthadox, is buy a third-party wireless card which has better gain possibilities, mod it to use your iBook's antenna, and use OrangeWare's Wireless Driver to make it all work. In all seriousness, I doubt the gain would be worth the headache.

Hmmm thanks for the link to dd-wrt i am going to have to try it out this weekend the interface looks a lot more friendly then open wrt. how much of distance do you think is gained by pushing it to 251

im using dd-wrt as well and it has pushed quite a bit more distance. I have put all the power to one of the terminals and I am running Tx and Rx both from that terminal. It is hooked up to a 15dbi omnidirectional antenna. It does quite nicely. But the thing I love about this firmware is all the options, I mean it offers everything under the sun.

you might check out this product.

http://www.smalldog.com/wag15876/atdedalmacex/

I used an old Sawtooth G4 chasis, with the plastics removed and the Airport antenna cable connected to my iBook's card. It worked quite well.