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Hacking a WaveLan Silver card to work as an Airport card
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: The decaying ruins of Old New York
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I've seen some stuff on various Mac forums (MacRumors and AppleFritter, specifically) alluding to the possibility of hacking apart the Lucent Orinoco WaveLan Silver cards (found in the original graphite Airport base stations) to the size of a regular Airport card for use in older iBooks and PowerBooks.
Has anyone done this? I found some scans of the circuitboard on an Airport card and one revision of the WaveLan Silver card (although the board from the card I've taken apart does not look the same). How might I go about cutting off the end of the card (so it's short enough to fit in a clamshell's Airport slot) and resoldering the antenna connector to it?
Scans are here:
Airport card
WaveLan Silver card
I'll post a scan of my own WaveLan card when I get home, if that helps. I'm not much into EE and whatnot, so this is new ground for me.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: The decaying ruins of Old New York
Status:
Offline
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Junior Member
Join Date: Nov 2007
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That scan looks almost exactly like the Truemobile 1150 I put in my clamshell. Did you take the "antennas" off? They were a pair of thin metal L's, right?
1. Remove the antenna jack and one of the L's.
2. de-solder the attachment for the other "L" that is at the end of the board.
3. Cut half of the last trace of the board off using very sharp scisors. This should put you about half way through two of the L shaped antenna mounting holes. You will need to either remove or cut through the leds on the edge of the board.
4. Resolder the loose connection on the antenna
5. Trim the bottom plastic guard tray so that it will not sit on the "shelf" inside the iBook. (~ 1/8th of an inch)
6. reassemble the plastic guard trays back on the board and wrap with electrical tape.
7. Inside the clamshell remove the fingered tin piece that has the weird foam stuff on top. All I had to do was remove the to exposed screws and give it a good yank. Watch your fingers!
8. Pop the card into your iBook and flatten the L shaped antenna as much as possible.
9. Enjoy!
A couple of quick notes:
1. No, I have not reinstalled the antenna jack yet. I'm working on a solution to that. The reception is so-so without it. when I have a solution I will post it here.
2. I could not for the life of me get the antenna to fold the right way, so I had to "lock" the keyboard to get it to stay flat enough for my liking.
Edit: I think I should mention that it is still a tight squeeze even with the trimming.
Edit #2: I'll be away from "the digital life" until 11/25. I'll check this thread when I get back and answer any questions then.
(Last edited by stevebez; Nov 16, 2007 at 01:10 AM.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Dec 1999
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One possibility is to find out who the chipset maker is of the wireless card. Often the chipset manufacturer will have a generic driver even if the company that produces the finished product doesn't.
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"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
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