AirPort Blog

that's all well and good, but i need that pc card slot. what i don't ever use, though, is my modem, so what i want to see is an antenna that replaces the modem jack...

I, too, need that PC card slot. (and my modem)

It kinda sounds like once you've installed the stub, you've lost the use of the PC card slot for anything else.

I'd appreciate any clarification on this.

I'd prefer it over the whip option, cuz I prefer not to have a patch of velcro on my PowerBook.

Just read on QuickerTek's home page that installing either solution does prevent the use of the slot for other uses.

I think it's a cool solution, but for me it's not an option. (although I would guess that most folks don't use their PC card slot)

If you reread the announcement, you can attach the stub to the airport card and use it in the PC card slot, so you wouldn't permanently lose the use of your slot, you just can't use the airport PC card slot at the same time. This also would let you share your airport card between (PC card capable) computers.

What I wonder is, can I leave my old airport card in place and just use and external card and stub antenna if I need a little more range, or would the two airport cards confuse the Mac?

Alan

I tried to put my airport card in an x86 laptop running GNU/Linux once, and the result was a steady stream of beeping and kernel error messages from the pcmcia drivers. I've heard that the airport slot is wired differently than other PC Card slots. I know someone who tried putting other PC cards in the internal airport slot on a g4 desktop mac running linux, and got simmilar results. Does this adapter really make airport cards into PC-card compatible cards? If so, I'm really curious as to how they've done that, but the page doesn't have much info.

The product doesn't claim to turn an AirPort card into a compatible PC Card. Rather, it lets you stick an external antenna on an AirPort card inserted into a Mac.

I don't know how they achieve that magic, but it's likely to be a mac only solution.

This product does not allow you to remove the Airport Card and use it in the PC card slot. According to the Technowarehouse site,

" Removing the Airport card from its original slot and placing it in the PCMCIA slot is not an option due to the engineering of the Airport card."

All this product does is thread a cable out to an external antenna through the PC card slot, giving you better reception, but blocking the slot for any other use.

I'm with the urban matador. I'd love to have an external antenna to click into the modem port

hmm.... maybe it would be possible to hack a port into the side of the titanium case. i never use my pci card slot though, so im stongly concidering this as an option.

since i never use my internal 56k modem on my Ti, it might be possible to remove that, and thread the cable out that hole in the back.... sounds hacktackular, but it might work. my warrenty is voided already anyway ;)

Would it be possible to pop out the IrDA window in the back on the TiBook and thread the cable through there instead of through the PCMCIA slot?

From what i know the airport card has an external connector for an antenna that you can run through the computer and usually out the PC card slot. But for those of you who use it you may be able to pop it out elsewhere. I like that idea of using the unused modem or IR slot but haven't yet tried it myself. personally i think that running a pigtail off the card is a better (and cheaper!) trick than getting a pc card converter for $40 and then another antenna... why not just use it where it is with an antenna? both solutions would end up using your PC slot... just my two cents.

check this page for pigtail info:
http://www.binaervarianz.de/projekte/hardware/mactail/

Bought the whip antenna. It works great - five bars all over the place, can see tons of my neighbours' base stations.

It comes with two cables, one that snaps into the AirPort card, and a smaller, thinner cable that is attached to the antenna itself. I am not sure on the ports. Looking at the link from the previous post, it may be a Lucent connector for the card, and a female sma connector. That means the smaller, thinner cable is a male sma connector...

Unfortunately the first cable (that attaches to the AirPort card) is not long enough to make it out the IR window porthole as I'd hoped. It's about an inch too short, plus is pretty hard to thread under the headphone jack.

I tried threading the thinner antenna cable in through the porthole. It is very thin and flexible and easily goes under the headphone jack. However, the turning radius of the thicker cable is too much to readily connect to the thinner cable. While it can be connected, it does not leave enough slack in the thinner cable to make it to the mounting point on the back of the display.

I suppose you could mount the antenna lower down on the display, but you'd still be dealing with a thick cable turning too tightly.

If the AirPort card cable were thinner and longer, the IR porthole idea would work really well. I've sent techwarehouse and email, but I'm not holding my breath.

-John