It looks to me like the antenna attachment for Airport Extreme is the same as for regular ol' airport. I'm thinking I could use my Cube's antenna to hack an external antenna for 12" powerbook. Before I dig through storage and rip out the antenna, can anyone confirm this is indeed the same connector?
Anonymous
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Should be. 802.11b and 802.11g use the same frequencies.
If you don't want your cube, I'll take it.
Sorry, I'm keeping the cube
I realized after posting that I had an antenna in a tower that was easier to get to.
Well, now this is interesting. I snipped out the antenna from my sawtooth tower at the first little metal box in the top corner(I didn't feel like going through the hassle taking it out the right way, and I figured I only lose about 4 inches of length), tried it out and got absolutely nothing, no reception at all. I used a length of about 2 feet 4 inches, and tried putting it in different directions, shapes, etc. Very disappointing!
Do those two little metal boxes that the antenna goes through in the sawtooth actually serve a function? I just assumed a length of antenna wire would suffice.
The length of the antenna needs to be proportional to the frequency range it needs to transmit/receive. Ever notice how the "rubber ducky" antennas that come with PCI wireless cards and wireless routers are all the same length?
http://www.qsl.net/kd4sai/antencal.html
Though I seem to remember from my amateur radio days theres a different calculation that applies to certain rather high or low frequencies... I just can't remember which one. Maybe this calc takes this into consideration, dunno.
Googling a little about antenna theory and the associated terms on the above link (quarter wave, half wave, MHz vs. GHz, etc) will help lots.
-- Macinjosh
Is this the little box you cut off??
If so then you cut off your antenna. The braided cable is coax, plain old wire won't work for a wifi antenna. In fact you could actually fry the radio with it.
Not exactly, but close (the one in your picture looks more like the one in my cube than the two small rectangles in the G4) Darn! I wonder if it would be possible to solder back together?
Now that I've actually looked at the Cube service manual and I know how this works now, I might try scavenging that one. Otherwise I'll end up getting something like this. More expensive than scavenged parts, but cheaper than Quickertek. I was disappointed to make a whole trip to Fry's just for that and discover that they have antennas galore but *none* that use the connectors that Apple's airport cards use.
If you goto compusa or something similiar they'll probably have some really cheap small antenna that will work. It will also probably work much better than the one in the tower.
That's the same antenna I used on my old titanium powerbook. It works really well. See if compusa has antennas for Orinoco gold or silver cards. They use the same connector, actually they are pretty much the same card.
Consarnit, I took out my Cube's antenna (and this time, I didn't cut off the antenna boxes!), and it still didn't work. I guess I have to buy one, but I'd like to understand why an antenna works fine in one computer and not in another.
Can you post any pictures? Or e-mail them to me? They really should "just work". I've attached the antennas from iMacs to airport/Orinoco cards and they worked. I've attached the antenna you see in my picture to a lucent silver card and it worked.
Sorry, I packed the antenna back in the cube as soon as it was apparent it didn't work (knowing full well my procrastinating tendencies, and I didn't want yet another comptuter part floating around in a box that would get lost). I did try all kinds of different positions and distances between the two antenna boxes, assuming that their relation in space is important, but nothing worked.
Card known good? If (as it appears) the xtreme connector is the same as on the original AP card, your undamaged Cube antenna ought to have worked.
Another source for interesting antennae are the clamshell iBooks, for example in use see rude bodge on my TiBook.
dan k