DIY Airport (for that old iBook)
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So, right, an iBook, even the older ones, are fine notebooks. Mine is a modest dual-USB one with 600MHz G3 and 384MB. Of course, I’d rather have a quicker model, but still, for roadtrips and websurfing it’s alright. Really it is. It runs Tiger quite smooth, which was a big surprise to me actually. There’s been only one downside to mine. It didn’t come with an Airport-card when I bought it. Now I did pay only 225 euros for mine, which was with a dead battery and some major keyboard-repair... but still, it was a steal… Compared to that price, I really refused to pay something like 100-120 euros for a second-hand obsolete 11MBit Airport-card, simply because there’s a scarcity for those cards as it seems. The price just isn’t right. Soooo… I knew this ‘trick’ with the Lucent WaveLANs (described in this how-to) a long time but hadn’t found the cards yet… So for a conference I attended last year, I bought this Belkin-stick which worked quite nice. But still… I wanted to have a proper wireless connection without putting in some USB-dongle all the time…
credit:
How to save £100 (and try not to break something in the process…)
is a similar project like this one. I used that information for this project too, so credit where credit’s due and yes, this has been done before. (but that never stops commenters it seems ^_^ )
(Next to that, I really like to have my own go on things but I guess you figured that much…)
Any way, time to get to work!
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But then, I did find these Lucent WaveLAN Orinoco Silver cards! And when you look for them, I’m sure you will find them too :-) (I’ve got four of them now, but I’m not able to sell any of these off… there are more projects coming up with these cards…). I paid 17.50 euro per card so even though I had to wait for a while (and I haven’t been looking for them for months either…)... I did save myself 100 euro… that is… if this is going to work…
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...and here’s my iBook…. Never mind the colour and don’t mind my taste in table cloths… *^_^*
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...oh! and don’t mind my keyboard as well…
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Well, because I use a G4 14” -keyboard, which has a longer cable than the 12” keyboard I should be using, I already removed a piece of metal, normally in there… I suggest you remove it also(if, of course, you’re going to do the same as I did), I’ve been working for months without it and my iBook works just fine…
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I had to remove the black plastic from the card and really, there isn’t a nice way in doing this. I open up lots of stuff and normally I manage to do it in a reversible fashion, but not this time… So pry it open with a knife or such… This is a one-way street… (but the card’s cheap).
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Well, this way it doesn’t fit… way too tight…
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So, I had to remove the metal as well, in the same non-reversible fashion as I removed the black plastic… Just pry it open any way you like it.
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Now look! and this is why we like this card… it’s flexible!
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...and it fits!
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...euhm… at the connector end that is… on the other side, this problem exists… Even though I read Tanais’ How-to, this came as a surprise to me. I guess I have to pay more attention…
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So even though Tanais decided to make the whole card as flat as possible, I decided to only make the one point where it really is going to be tight, as flat as possible and leave a plastic frame on both sides and the RF-shields on the chips where they were… I did however have to cut a piece of the plastic frame which leans on the metal and makes up for the tightest spot under our keyboard…
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The card also comes with two internal antennas, but we really don’t need those, since we’re connecting it to the antenna provided under the hood of our iBook.
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Here you can see I desoldered both antennas and anyone with a little solder-experience should be able to do the same.
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So, alright, the card fits on the connector-side quite well, but I still had my doubts if this was going to fit.
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But look! It fits!
Time to open her up again and finish off our DIY Airportcard
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Of course I used ducttape to finish off this beauty *^_^*
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And I’m a sucker for details, so I peeled off the stickers of the metal we left in an earlier stage. I put them on this card with some double-sided tape. I also use double-sided tape to be able to recycle stickers and …put them on my iBook…
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I’m not quite sure if the people over at Lucent ever meant ‘Silver’ to be matching with ducttape… but now it is!
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And here’s another shot of my keyboard with the newly installed DIY Airportcard. You do have to cramp it in a little and it’s a little too tight for my taste to be honest… But well, so is my budget *^_^*
I am going to look in ways of loosen it up a little but for now I leave it as it is.
The software-part
Now here comes the real magic… The software-part… There isn’t any! Just power up your iBook and see what happens…
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Your iBook thinks it just got an Airport-card installed and as a matter of fact, it did. These Airport-cards are nothing else than rebadged and slightly smaller Orinoco-cards, this just proves it (again).
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IT
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JUST
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WORKS!
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Now I can leave my UTP-cable and my Belkin-stick, although I am going to keep this Belkin-stick in my laptopbag for sure. It allows me to connect to 54MBit, 802.11g-networks instead of only the 11MBit 802.11b-ones. Next to that, even thought connecting to a wireless network with this Belkin-stick is much more of a hassle than with this Airport-card, it can have it upsides too. For instance, when I attended this conference last year, there were lots of accesspoints in the hotel, but… everyone with a Mac (around 80% of the people I guess) saw only one network while I could see all the different accesspoints in my software. So, when most of the audience was all packed in one room, for instance during keynote-speeches, everybody tried to connect to one accesspoint, the one which gave the strongest signal. So even though the bandwidth at the hotel wasn’t the problem, there was lots of that, the experienced bandwidth was a problem during such a keynote-speech cause everybody tried to use this same 54mbit accesspoint… At such a time, 54mbit isn’t a whole lot. When I started fooling around in my software, I was able to connect to a more distant accesspoint, on a different channel and with a signalstrength of only 30% and all of a sudden I had my own private connection with lots of bandwidth ^_^. For instance, while everybody around me had trouble to even get to google.com, I was able to upload images I just made with my camera, with around 1MB/sec… So this Belkin-stick is a keeper for sure, especially for these kind of occassions. On all other occassions, this ‘new’ DIY Airportcard is my way to go…
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...and then… I still have some cards left… Here’s a sneak preview of what’s coming up…
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...but more on that later *^_^*
...and that time is now!
getting your eMate wireless :-)
DIY trackback
MAKE:blog
you can find all of my projects overhere
u are a dare devil man, i like that! no pain no gain.
The last weekend i made a similar thing on my notebook, i pulled a minipci wlan car from a ASUS Wifi expansion, was quite easy, only put into the minipci slot, download the driver and finish. 100mw !!
...is that an eMate I spy?
Very nice.
Good job!
Nice work.
And I personally love the colour of your IBook.
Great article on the DYI Airport. I wanted to ask you about your Belkin wifi stick. I have an older G4 iMac that I want to connect to an AirPort Express to wirelessly stream music to my home stereo. You think I can use one of the $40 USB Belkin sticks like you have on my iMac?
The Belkin web site doesn’t list any Mac information… only that it is compatible with various versions of Windows.
Thanks!
nice work, but i am much more interested in your newton/emate project… I just got an emate ans a 2100 and want to hook them up to my wireless connection too
well done…
cool! i have this exact card sitting on my desk, and that exact ibook (without LCD) sitting here too… now i have a project!
@Abraham (#5):
Well, I used the Ralink-drivers for mine. Compared to something like this Airport, going the way of a USB-dongle is quite a hassle… So I’m not sure I can recommend it…
@rick (#6):
Wireless eMate is coming up next! :-)
I cont belive you bent the card, If I did that, I would of broke it.
yeah right, what reason would I have to make this up? It’s a very thin PCB inside this PCMCIA-card… Get the same card from eBay and try it if you will, although that would be a little bit stupid, to only buy it to see if it’s bendable, now wouldn’t it?
FUCKING NOOB I GONNA SHIT TO YOUR BITCH MOTHER’S MOUTH THEN CUT HER FUCKING HEAD OFF IF YOU WRITE SUCH A MEANINGLESS ARTICLE AGAIN
FUCKING NOOB I GONNA SHIT TO YOUR BITCH MOTHER’S MOUTH THEN CUT HER FUCKING HEAD OFF IF YOU WRITE SUCH A MEANINGLESS ARTICLE AGAIN
@#11 & #12 … I think you should find some How-to in how to become a proper troll or flamer or whatever your life-ambition is… What happened? you posted your comment and thought ‘shoot! I’ve should’ve posted it through a proxy? You know what, I’m just going to post again right after it, maybe no one notices…’
Let me guess? judging by the IP-block you’re posting from, your job at Whittemore Management, probably as a sysadmin is getting at you? Well, I advise you to take it somewhere else will you?
tssss… you double-post, in Caps, trying to do so through an anonymous proxy… you should be ashamed… (and you should know better, judging by your linux workstation… you’re a disgrace to yourself man…) :D
That “Belkin Wireless-G stick” works on a G3 iBook without any added software? I’m running MacOS X 10.3.9 in my G3 iBook 800. If so, then I’m getting one, pronto!
I’ve heard that the Airport card sucks up CPU cycles, because it’s actually a standard PCMCIA port, which doesn’t have it’s own dedicated processor, like 32-bit Cardbus slots do. And the fact, you can use a standard PCMCIA wireless card like the Orinoco Silver, proves it’s a PCMCIA slot!
@#14, you might wanna read comment #8 _
Awesome hack! Glad it turned out so well! Too bad it’s impossible to find any smaller Wi-Fi cards that are equipped with an external antenna jack. Your workaround seems to function quite nicely, though!
nice work! good solution to the airport scarcity dilemma. I suggest you get the peeps over at lowendmac.com to publish this or at least link to it
Hello
nice work! But one question…
Where have you buyed the WaveLan Cards? In Germany do you get them only for much money (40€ and more).
Do you have a good shop or a good adress of one where I can buy a few cards of them for cheap money?
Mfg Don
p.s. sorry for my bad english
hi. just so you know i know next to nothing about comuters so i realize i might be wasting your time but here’s my question: i just received an ibook G3 (800MHz / 256MB running on a Mac OSx 10.2.8) from a friend. Free! Anyway, I’d like to make it wireless but am not as technically inclined as you. Is it possible to install an internal Wi Fi card without having to make all those adjustments? I too would like to avoid using a USB dongle. Any help anyone could offer would be super appreciated!
I think what you’ve done is very cool. I don’t mind using a USB thing, it that just a Belkin? What are the disadvantages to one of those things vs. having something internal except for the ugliness factor? Is is slower? Like the previous commenter, sorry for the ignorance about this stuff.
Thanks,
Anna
@#19, sure, you can get the original Airport-card second-hand. The whole point for me to do it the way I described here is that that one is way overpriced compared to see what you get. 11MBit for +/- 100 euro/dollar?
@anna: The one I use is a Belkin indeed, it only comes without Mac OS-drivers (I said something about it in comment #9). But once you have it working it’s faster (since it can connect to 54Mbps-networks). Downpoint is, connecting to a wireless network can’t be more hassle-free than with an original Airport-card or the way I did it (since that is recognized as the original card).
I just did this trick with my iMac G4. I didn’t need to cut off that much, although the external memory (SO-DIMM) is being pushed out by the card (and held in by the casing, so I still have the right amount of memory.
My only problem now is to be able to connect to a WPA router. Does anyone know if this card does or doesn’t support WPA security?
Hey guys, I used the instructions here on my ibook G3 800mhz with osx 10.3.9 and was able to use an IBM High Rate 128 card as an Airport Card. It was actually pretty easy and worked because the IBM High Rate card has a Lucent Chipset same as the Airport card and same as the Lucent Wavelan Silver card. I just pluged it in and powered on. It told me there was a new airport card installed and uses all the original mac osx airport software.
Thank You
Does this Lucent WaveLAN Orinoco Silver also fit in a Mac mini 1.25G ?
Irez, did you have to modify that IBM card to fit in your ibook? Has anyone else out there tried this?
Dropping a comment… WIRELESSLY! Got a WaveLAN silver (flashed to gold) card from eBay ($28.50 including shipping) and followed your instructions to get my ol’ iBook G3 800 mobile. Thanks!
@#16 – There actually is an alternative to the Apple Original Airport Card.
It’s not the cheapest solution either which was the reason for the DIY.
On Craigslist here in NYC I picked up an Original Airport Card for $20 USD Cash. They Range from $50 USD to $90 USD normally but tend to be $90-$99 USD :(
Now back to the alternate card. There are so many Re-Badged WaveLAN Cards out there which are seen as Airpot Cards as others have mentioned. IBM, Enterasys, COMPAQ, HP, Dell… I’ll throw in to the mix now the ONLY other card with the same form factor as the Airport Card. It’s put out by no other than SONY... and is seen as a WaveLAN Gold – there are actually a few versions but I personally have the oldest model which was a bit pricey when I got it but for anyone who wants to consider using it in an iBook, eMate or MessagePad 2000/2100 this is the card to get because it has a SUPER SLIM Right Angle Antenna which has to connectors. So the iBook for example has only one antenna connector, but if you decided to figure a way to wire in another antenna in there you’d probably get better reception. Here is a link to a few photos of it I have on my Flickr account. (Two variants)
Mine: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonnyhung/92016538/ – I use this one on my Wallstreet PowerBook (G4/500) & MessagePad 2100
A friend’s: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonnyhung/116689073/
Hei, very good trick but wht abt Drivers ? I want to use Gigabyte Wireless card..can it work ?
It sounds wonderful and cheap, Do you know it this can work with OSX10.2.8 or I need the OSX10.3.9?
What do you think about encore It is a cheap wireless card PCMCIA?
Happy New Year for everybody
hey, tell me that this doesnt sound strange? one day, i was with my cousin and she has a iBook 300mhz clamshell. just for fun, i popped her keyboard and took out her airport, and put in a Netgear 802.11b MA401 PCMCIA card, and when it booted, it worked just as a Airport card would. it didnt fit with very well though. i cant seem to find the chipset info for this card though! :( and to boot i cant seem to recreate the results :(
hey, tell me… i have a G4 iMac. i need to make either an antenna hack or a USB hack for my air port card to increase my range? can anyone help me??
does it have to be a wavenlan silver card or would bronze do?
ive been trying to find one…i guess the best place to look is ebay.co.uk?
thanks
i feel like this might be a stupid question, but where is the cable that is plugging into the card coming from? is it buried inside the ibook?
hola genio!!! funciona esta placa? tengo una ibook g4 933mhz.
Gracias!!!
CardBus form factor for CardBus equipped portable PCs
IEEE 802.3 for 10BASE-T y IEEE 802.3u for 100BASE-TX compliant
Automatically negotiates 10 or 100 Mbps connection rate
Provides full-duplex to enhance throughput
Complies with PC Card 1995 CardBus standards
Switchless design and software-configurable card setting
68-pin connector for attachment to PC’s CardBus slot
3.3V low power consumption
LEDs diagnostics and monitoring indicators
Hey,
cool job… but did you upgrade the card to 802.11b? Normaly it is a non-‘b’ only card, AFAIR... If so, how did you do it?
cu
@Matt (#33):
That’s the antenna and it’s ‘buried’ inside the screen(cover). iBooks have quite a good reception actually.
@Uli (#35)
A Lucent WaveLAN silver is a proper 802.11b card, what I did is nothing more than making it fit inside my iBook (and it’s still there, working flawlessly, it hasn’t failed on me, not once) :-)
So has anyone found out other models that can do the same thing as the Lucent WaveLan card? I’ve read the posts and saw that there was a Sony and an IBM one, but could someone give me a list of cards that are capable of doing the job? thanks a lot and this is an amazing hack. Props Markie
hi, I have a PowerBook G4 400Mhz with an Airport installed, but I managed to get hold of an Orinoco Silver card that shows up in the PC Card util in OSX as a Lucent/WaveLAN. Would this work as an internal Airport replacement, if I did you mod to it.
A pic is here:
http://www.simonroyal.co.uk/pics/macwifi/orinoco-silver-card.jpg
I am trying to collate a concise work/don’t work for Airport replacement cards or alternative cards for PowerBooks G3/G4.
http://www.simonroyal.co.uk/html/articles/maccards.html
An update to the PowerBook trial. I have stripped my Orinoco Silver Lucent/WaveLAN card and while it works in my Airport slot it is far too long, seems as if this hack is an iBook exclusive.
i got myself an Orinoco Silver card and did the same thing, but i have areally big bulge at my keyboard. especially the top center part of it. anyway to get it to go down? haha
Well I have tried this hack also in an iMac G3 (two actually). Of course you need the Airport Bracket, but it works. The card takes a little manouvering inbetween the Airport Bracket holder and the top of the RAM sockets but once installed, it works perfectly.
Check out my page on Airport Hacks, inspired by GeekTechnique.
http://www.simonroyal.co.uk/html/articles/airport-hack.html
I bought a USB dongle from ebay and the company i bought it from included downloadable drivers—
i have a feeling you can download these drivers but then just use a belkin usb dongle and save some money- if anyone gets this to work please let me know at fivespeedmax@gmail.com
here are the drivers
http://www.corecomps.com/drivers/CoreComputers%20Drivers%20and%20Installation/Airport%20Express%20USB%20Wireless%20Card.html
Hello i just want to know if the Apple ibook g3 800mhz could it take this kind of pcmcia card that is been sold on ebay and is it able to take 802.11g or 802.11n pcmcia network wifi card?? http://cgi.ebay.com/Airport-Wireless-PC-Card-for-Apple-Mac-PowerBook-G3-G4_W0QQitemZ150110371653QQihZ005QQcategoryZ80060QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Hello, I have a great success of installing the NEC Aterm WL11CB 802.11b PCMCIA card on my ibook G3 600mhz. All i did is just rip off the plastic antenna and it fit in quite well. It recognized as Airport card straight away.
Recently i’ve upgarded my old 11Mbps router to a D-link DI-524 54G with WPA-PSK (AES) security. The NEC card was only designed for WEP 128bit and therefore, My ibook can’t connect to my wireless network anymore. It can only occasionally “see” the networks’ SSID and when i try to connect it prompt with the “error on joining”.
I did alot of Google and i found this
http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/wirelessformac.htmlas a commerical solution. I am sure all the cards listed are good for some Tibook or so but how about put those cards into ibook G3 dual USB??
If you happen to have a 802.11G 54Mbps card from your PC or something, try it. They have a 10min Trial version available from the site and see if it works! best thing is it only cost $15.
Please share your result!
Great job Marc!
I have got a PB G4 Aluminium and my Airport extreme card broke the other day. So now was the time to get a PCMCIA Card with an outside connector for an external antenna. Because the reception for this PB is bad.
So I found the Lucent Wavelan Silver card for a very good price and guess what: OSX (10.4.9) does NOT recognise the card (?)!!!(?)
Even the guy from the MacStore suggested me to buy the IOX driver (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16802)
Does anyone have a clue to why it does not work and what else I could try to make it work like above,
Cheers,
Henry
Just installed a WaveLan Turbo Silver card in my girffriends old white ibook g3. Took about 15 min from start to finish. Works flawlessly!
Got the card off eBay from PCChopShop for $19.99. Well worth it!
Thanks! Posting using the old ibook and wavelan card now. :)
Just installed a WaveLan Turbo Silver card in my girffriends old white ibook g3 (OS X 10.4.8). Took about 15 min from start to finish. Works flawlessly!
Got the card off eBay from PCChopShop for $19.99. Well worth it!
Thanks! Posting using the old ibook and wavelan card now. :)
Thanks for tutorial. Did the job for about $18. The bulge in the keyboard is noticeable, but it doesn’t bother me at all when I’m typing. I bought the ibook from Craigslist for dirt cheap and now I have a nice little Ibook that I can travel with and not worry about it.
I recently bought a iBook G3 500 MHz and thought I’d experiment around a bit with that “air port” socket. What I wanted to know was if it would take any PC-card o. It turned out, after some experimenting, that it wouldn’t. Lacking any wlan card at all, I experimented a bit with some old PC-cards I had lying around (one obscure modem and a D-link DFE-650 LAN adapter). Now, what happened when I tried to power on the iBook was that the normal apple fanfare sounded, but the screen remained black. And never lit up, until I powered the machine down and removed the card.
Now, having a notebook without wireless network is n’t very fun, and the various USB dongles I’ve tried works horribly under GNU/Linux. Now, do you know anything about what is required of the card in order for the computer to boot at all? Does the firmware perform some checks on the hardware? Or is there something special about the WaveLAN/airport cards (16-bit only perhaps?) that makes them work and my cards not? And do you know of any other card that could replace the Lucent WaveLAN card, as those are even harder to get by than original airport cards here in Sweden.
HI! I know this thingy im writing about is not really related to the topic, Anyways im looking to buy a mac book to you know see what its like to use a mac. So if theres anybody willing to sell me (any) book please tell me. Thanks!
If this is on any interest to peopel that exact card can be found for free in an old broken 1st gen Airport. I stripped one years ago an found that card, i kept it and tried using it on a pc but drivers were an issue. Also worthy of note for pc owners is that a lot of early wireless routers come with mini pci card for there wireless lan. These can often bee taken out and used inside laptops which have a free mini card slot for a factory option wireless lan. Ok we are talkign fairly old stuff now, p4 are before. I have done this and it worked fine
Hehe, trey cool. Just working on making the lan board case (instead of using duct tape) out of plastic to make it fit. Gota love Auto Desk Inventor!
I tried the geektechnique hack and while it worked, the keyboard bulge is aesthetically unacceptable. Does anyone know if it is possible to shorten the circuit board? If it is, I would imagine one could desolder the antenna connector, shorten the circuit board and then reattach the antenna connector so the card actually fits.
hi!
Is it possible to do this mod using an (Atheros) SMCWCB-G Pcmcia wireless?
regards from Spain
thanks for this nice tutorial. it works just fine.
today I bought a couple of Lucent Bronze Turbo cards for little money. does anyone now if they will work too?
http://www.macoffee.net/airport.html
and here Photos http://www.macoffee.net/images/airport/downl/AirPhoto.zip
actually this worked just as well in an imac g3 as well! thanks!
Would one of these suckers work?
http://www.summitdatacom.com/Graphics/SDC-PC10AGrightfacing_300_wide.jpg
Looks like they’re using the broadcom chipset. I think that chipset is fully supported if you have a recent enough version of OSX running.
And because they don’t have the ugly plastic antenna hanging off the end, no modification necessary…. perhaps…?
can you erase comments 11 and 12? That guys comments are a disgrace