Yes, this is very interesting.

I remember reading when Airport was new that it didn't use an ordinary PCMCIA slot. I had quite recently begun to suspect otherwise, since the original Airport basestations had a PCMCIA card in, not an airport. It was a Lucent or an Orinoco I think. Got one lying about somewhere.....
Whatever it was, it didn't show up as an airport card in my PowerBook though. I have seen others which do. My card may be a dead one though. The station it came from was faulty.

mordaskyt wrote:



Not yet, but if what's been disussed here is true, it should work. The Airport connector in his iBook is the same as what's in the Pismo; they use the same Airport card, as do all the Airport v1 Macs.

My Linksys G card is also simply a PC card, so it ought to work. It's also recognised natively by OS X.

That leaves modding my Pismo Airport antenna for better reception, something I've always envied about the Clamshell ibooks, which had the best reception of any Apple laptop.

Having taken apart my Pismo's display housing, I can tell you the antenna is crap, but there is room in there for something better B)

Waragainstsleep wrote:


Yes, it should show up as Airport.
On your 'Book, in X, you will see, first, the PC Card icon, and the drop-down menu will show BROADCOM, and next to that icon, of course, will be your Airport icon.

As aforementioned, G cards using the Broadcom chipset will be recognised as Airport Extreme cards.
This would be the only way of having internal Airport Extreme in Airport v1 Macs.

Antonio wrote:


Hmmmm. what would be even more interesting would be to mount a small antenna- a hinged one like on a dlink router--to the side of an ibook-- or, better yet, an Albook. That would make for some better reception.

Anyhoo, tomorrow I'm off to get a (rather cheap, I hope) soldering iron, and proceed, as TCPMeta suggested, to take off the card's plug, then to solder on the antenna itself. I'll take some pics all the way through.


thanks guys/girls.

Waragainstsleep wrote:



Yes indeed, I have an old graphite station, and I took it apart not too long ago. Here is, as far as I can gather, what's in what:

-Graphite: Lucent brand 11b card

-"Dual Ethernet"/Snow: Apple branded, Lucent made 11b card. This was modified (the end cut back) to fit in the new line of Ibooks and G3 Powerbooks.

-Then, they moved into the Extreme(g) series.

Having just taken apart the Buffalo card, I realize that most of the board which the plastic covers is unused, and is mostly needed, I suppose, so that the card doesn't just disappear into your PCMCIA slot, as its supposed to be used;) Thus, Apple just got Lucent to do away with it, and they put the newer model in both the portables and the Snow base stations.

One could imagine that there's quite a few g3 ibook users out there who have a Snow basestation, thinking the latter is completely useless and out of date...

Well, despite some very sloppy soldering, I've completed the task. In the end, I took off the card's plug, and replaced it by soldering on two small wires, which in turn connected to the Ibook's antenna. I'm getting a solid connection to my Linksys router, four whole bars.

As this was my first time out, I'm quite pleased, even though the job was relatively poorly completed and probably fragile at best, maybe even temporary.

I'll be doing up a mod guide some time this week or next, hopefully, to be accompanied by some low-quality phone-cam pics. Perhaps some drawings? Interperative dance?


THANK YOU!!! to all who've given their ten cents. Your help was appreciated.;)

That's great to hear! I'm glad that the project turned out as you wished, though you should clean up the job(if possible) while you have the opportunity.

Good for you man, Yeah, solder those tiny wires is tough. You could put a small blob of epoxy on it to make it more secure. I gave you a karma point for having the balls and pulling it off.B)
-maestro

Impressive! Great job, looking forward to the guide!B)

That is pretty cool, after seeing this I got curious and decided to pop a lucent silver card I have for my lombard into my G4's airport slot. Worked right away showing up as an Airport card. I may need get another card for the G4 to keep...

While we are on the topic, is there any way I can get airport to recognize the lucent card on my lombard? I know it works in airport slots now but I don't like trying to find drivers to get it to work through pcmia. Am I just missing something very obvious here, or is it not going to happen?