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Apple Businesses Hardware

TiBook Wi-Fi Range Hack: New Card 250

Posted by timothy from the escape-from-doctor-farraday's-island dept.
eggboard writes "Apple likes the profit margins on its internal AirPort card (still $100 three years after introduction), but the Faraday cage that is the Titanium PowerBook keeps the AirPort card and the TiBook's internal antenna from achieving the same range as the plastic-cased white dual-USB iBooks. Wired News reports today on Cliff Skolnick et al's hack, which is simply to use a 200 mW PC Card coupled with OS X-compatible drivers. The cost winds up less than an AirPort Card, and you can get a model with an external antenna jack, too."
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TiBook Wi-Fi Range Hack: New Card More

TiBook Wi-Fi Range Hack: New Card

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  • Hack? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TotallyUseless ( 157895 ) <totNO@SPAMmac.com> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:20PM (#4462874) Homepage Journal
    Buying a WiFi card and installing drivers is a hack? mmmmmk.

    • The Real Fix for TiBook WiFI (Score:5, Informative)

      by pafischer ( 410936 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:52PM (#4463106) Homepage
      A friend of mine found this fix [macnet2.com] on the macnet2.com message boards. I have tried it on 5 TiBooks so far and it works great. The fix involves popping out our battery and squeezing the side of the case where the serial number label is. I don't understand why it works because the antenna cable runs in the ofther direction. But it does work. I have about 4x the WiFi reception/transmission range since I fixed my TiBook.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @01:03PM (#4463182)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • HP won't help you because you're out of warranty, IBM won't help you because they didn't make the printer OR your modem, USR says everything is fine, AOL won't help you unless you reinstall Windows from scratch and THEN install AOL 8.0...

        It's called PASSING THE BUCK

      • Re:Anything non-stock is a "hack" according to app (Score:5, Informative)

        by Archfeld ( 6757 ) <treboreel@live.com> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @01:22PM (#4463330) Journal
        Dell does refuse to trouble shoot anything but an authorized configuration, meaning what they shipped, or someother setup that they support explicitly. It is a corporate standard, no touchie the insides....of course us server monkies never RTFM or follow the rules :)Although I've had real good luck with Dell support, their phone people are sharp and quite helpful.
      • Apple has what are called "user seriviceable parts".

        These parts include: optical drives, RAM, hard drives, keyboards, mice and monitors.

        Other parts such as motherboards are considered far beyond the realm of user serviceability, and require taking the machine in to a tech. While there are those of us who are capable of performing such a task, I am sure that there are many more users that cannot. If I were a manufacturer who was supplying warranties on these products, I would not want users with unknown capabilities messing with delicate ESD-sensitive components on which that I would be liable for future repairs.

        Apple has been more than willing to help me with crapped-out parts, but these parts were items such as a dead Superdrive and iBook power adapter. Such parts that are allowed to be replaced can be done so easily, and save Apple a lot of cash and effort and by sending the replacements via overnight, save me a crapload of time.

      • I've had Apple overnight a HD on one occasion and on another occasion, a keyboard (coffee spill disaster). They didn't even ask for the damaged items back. All under warranty, free of charge. Apple support is O.K. in my book.
      • I used to work for a school system as a technician, and I had no trouble getting replacement parts, including motherboards, from Apple. Our school district signed up with AppleOrder and AppleService which allowed us to login to their website, pick which part we needed, select if it was under warranty or not (and enter serial # so they could confirm it), and Airborne Express would be there the next morning with the replacement part. It was really very quick and easy, and was much better than dealing with Gateway when we needed a fix under warranty. I'm not sure what cost, if any, there was to use it, but considering I had to order parts twice a week from them, it really was handy.

    • Re:Hack? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by adelayde ( 185757 )

      I totally agree with you. How on Earth does this deserve an article, let alone being posted on /.? Yes we had the same problem when we ran a solar and peddle powered internet cafe [psand.net] [plug] this summer with the titanium casing, the iBooks were loads less sensitive. But really, the thing comes with a PCMCIA slot, so it's hardly rocket science to go and buy a WiFi card no is it!? I use a slimline Buafflo WaveLAN cards, there are some drivers for it on the net somewhere, try Google, works very well, but don't eject it whilst the interface is being used unless you're in to seeing OS X crash!

      Next we'll see articles on how connecting and external DVD-RAM drive via firewire, solves the problem of them not coming with TiBooks!

  • Cheaper, but you lose stability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hairy_Potter ( 219096 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:22PM (#4462890) Homepage
    Goodness knows that Macs command a premium on their hardware, but that's because all their official Apple Hardware has been thoroughly tested and debugged against the various OSii. King Jobs rules a stern and strict kingdom, but at least you get stability.

    In contrast, if you start sticking commodity PC hardware in their with poorly tested drivers, yeah, you may save a few bucks, but you lose a lot of stability, your TiBook may no longer be capable of multiday uptimes.

    Here's a little experiment, go to any Mac forum and read up on hardware/software bugs, you'll find that 70% of them have been due to poorly designed third party software. Jobs may be greedy, but he also wants you have to the best, most reliable software out there.

    • Re:Cheaper, but you lose stability (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:35PM (#4462987) Journal
      go to any Mac forum and read up on hardware/software bugs, you'll find that 70% of them have been due to poorly designed third party software.

      First, I do not mean this as an anti-Mac troll, so please don't take it as such.

      The fact that the OS loses stability when running 3rd party software does NOT say much for the quality of its own engineering. *Anyone* can write a standalone app suite that, under ideal conditions (ie, a vanilla W2K install and just the app suite running) will seem rock-solid.

      In the real world, however, hundreds or even thousands of different software packages, most from different developers, must occupy the same physical machine. A decent OS *MUST* acknowledge that and not only deal with, but *expect*, poor behavior on the part of its apps. Not every app returns a meaningful value, not every app completely frees its memory, not every app releases all the hardware it asked to use. None of those "should" happen, but especially when a program crashes, they *do* happen. The OS has to figure out a way to clean up no matter what a user-space program does.

      No, I don't intend to say that any one OS does a whole lot better (cough, cough, Linux, cough), but I would not consider "stability under ideal conditions" a big selling point.

      • Re:Cheaper, but you lose stability (Score:5, Informative)

        by Scott Wood ( 1415 ) <scott@NOSPaM.buserror.net> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:44PM (#4463050)
        Linux, like any monolithic kernel, gives complete privilege to drivers (including those for wireless networking devices), allowing them to crash the system at will. I suggest you invest in some cough drops.
        • Linux, like any monolithic kernel, gives complete privilege to drivers (including those for wireless networking devices), allowing them to crash the system at will. I suggest you invest in some cough drops.

          Well if that were the case, why is Linux so damn stable? I have 2 systems running beta and expirmental wireless and firewire drivers that have never crashed. In my experience with Linux, drivers are sometimes a pain in the ass to get working, but once they are working they don't crash.

      • Third Party drivers, not applications. Drivers run in the priveledged kernel environment. The amount of damage a poorly written, tested, and debugged driver can do is much greater than an application of similar shoddy quality.

      • I don't really get your point. I get blue screens on windows with shitty drivers. I get kernel panics on Linux with shitty drivers *cough nVidia*. I get system freezes on openbsd with bad ram.

        Lets face it, the whole point of getting the whole widget, the stuff should just work. This is whole reason that MS is doing the certified hardware crap, that doesn't seem to really be helping much, is to gain stability in the OS.

        I don't believe you can properly protect the system from the hardware and bad drivers and maintain good performance. Maybe some modern mach kernels will do it, but I don't see anything mainstream in the CONSUMERS hands that do it.

    • Here's a little experiment, go to any Mac forum and read up on hardware/software bugs, you'll find that 70% of them have been due to poorly designed third party software. Jobs may be greedy, but he also wants you have to the best, most reliable software out there.

      See this is the problem with Mac fanboys is they take PR as fact. Steve Jobs doesn't care about software reliability, he cares about make profits. I'm not trying to put him down, because making profits is exactly what he should be doing. Mac's could use "commodity hardware" stably, but that would cannibalize their own hardware business. Why spend money supporting drivers from other hardware companies? So instead they give preference to their own hardware, which they should because Apple is a hardware company. Its not about stability, its about profits, which is not bad thing, but I'm sick of Apple fanboys thinking that their is some mission behind the company besides profits.

      • Re:Apple will lose profits not stability (Score:5, Informative)

        by gaudior ( 113467 ) <marktjohns@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @01:05PM (#4463195) Homepage
        I am so tired of hearing how Apple doesn't use commodity hardware, etc. What part of FireWire, IDE, SDRAM, USB, AGP, PCI is proprietary to Apple?

        • All of it, since if you want a Mac, you can only buy it from Apple. It doesn't matter that they've switched to pc-like hardware. It's still a proprietary system.
      • The problem with Mac fanboys is they take PR as fact. Steve Jobs doesn't care about software reliability, he cares about make profits.

        I have no doubt that he cares about both. Part of what powers the Steve Jobs reality distortion field is the he exudes a belief in what he's doing... the attention to detail, the aesthetics of the computing experience. It isn't an afterthought. Steve isn't always right, but it's really easy to believe he's trying to do The Right Thing (TM).

        Illustrative quote: "the problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste" ie, they don't really care about the user experience (and note when I say here that user experience is not just about pretty UI, it's about easy of system administration, and power to do what you'd like to do) except as an afterthought. Whereas Apple has often been concerned with -- even passionate about creating a product they thought was done right.

        Maybe I'm hypnotized by a mind ray. But I think that what it comes down to is that while Apple has to and is therefore concerned about profits and smart business, Apple is also headed by and made up mostly of craftsmen, while most other computing companies are headed by and made up of businessmen. Is there any way to prove this? I don't know. But their presentation has a more honest smell. And I find their products to be of a higher quality than the alternatives.

    • Oh, so almost anything non-Apple/third party has "poorly tested drivers" now?

      Seems a bit presumptous to imply that, if you ask me.
    • FUD. Plain and simple. This argument made sense under OS 9; under X it's for the most part a moot point. If the wireless driver dies (and I've used it for over a year with a Lucent card on a Wallstreet G3 with zero trouble-and that with bizzare base stations like OpenBSD as well as the Lucent AP1000), so what? It's not like OS 9 where everything dies. The network access dies. Wahh. Welcome to the wonderful world of BSD underneath. Sure, under OS 9 you'd probably be doing the cmd-cntrl-power stunt. That was then, this is now...
      • Err, I don't wanna burst your bubble, but even under Unix, a bad driver can ruin your day. As another poster above mentioned, drivers have full access to everything. This means they get to crash your system. This is true under Solaris, Net/Free/OpenBSD, Linux, Irix, Windows, MacOS 9, MacOS X, ProDOS, and just about anything else you can think of. While it would be theoretically possible to isolate off driver access, in reality it becomes rather difficult. Irix has an interface to do drivers entirely in userspace, but even then, there is a possibility that they can screw stuff up since they are directly manipulating hardware.

  • What a hack. (Score:5, Funny)

    by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:24PM (#4462906)
    Wow. They managed to plug in another card and install the drivers for it.


    I just installed a new video card in my machine. Can I get that written up as a hack on Slashdot? Or does it only count if I use a Mac?

  • in other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:25PM (#4462909)
    In a new hack, area man Bob Tinklepee discovers that his iMac's power cord is "completely interchangable" with the one his PC, thus saving him the $1400 expense of replacing his iMac with a new one when the cord became frayed.

    Members of online community slashdot were quick to praise the hack, but their fun was soon over when Apple filed a lawsuit against Bob for violating the DMCA.

    Tough nuts, Bob!

    • Re:in other news (Score:3, Informative)

      by BWJones ( 18351 )
      In a new hack, area man Bob Tinklepee discovers that his iMac's power cord is "completely interchangable" with the one his PC, thus saving him the $1400 expense of replacing his iMac with a new one when the cord became frayed.

      Actually, I believe the power cord on the iMac is unique and not interchangeable with the PC. Oh well, the power cord on my dual G4 is at least standard.

      • Re:in other news (Score:4, Interesting)

        by XorNand ( 517466 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:55PM (#4463126)

        I don't know about the new iMacs, but the older candy-colored ones had a standard power cord. They are translucent with multicolored wires (like the iMac they came with). I'm using one on my PC right now, in fact. Just another one of those little details that Apple is known for. How many PC vendors would bother with custom made power cords?
        • The flat panel iMacs, rather than the D-shaped cord, use a, erm, three-bubble shaped one. Kinda like three-fifths of the olympic logo, if that helps describe it. I don't think they are proprietary, as the older Compaq Armada laptops had the same kind of cord (the power supply was internal). Still, I haven't tried an Armada cord with my iMac yet: the cord is beige, it would ruin the decor.
        • Custom power cords?!?

          No wonder I paid so much for my Imac.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:in other news (Score:2, Informative)

        by dr00g911 ( 531736 )
        The power cords on the original iMacs (and every desktop Mac to date beforehand besides the cube) were industry-standard "D" plugs.

        The new flat-panel iMac is also a "D" plug, but the plastic molding around it is shaped kinda funny in a cloverleaf pattern, and it plugs in flush with the back of the unit to keep from breaking any lines, design-wise.

        You could take a dremel/exacto and a lot of patience to a standard power plug and it would work. But it would be really, really ugly.

        If worse came to worse and my cord shorted out/got chewed up by something, I'd probably order the Apple part instead of trying a hack. The new iMacs are just so nice looking, it'd be a shame to detract from it.
    • Actually, the power cord on an iMac (at least the LCD ones) is NOT compatible with a PC. It's got a rather funky three cylinder shape that would not fit in a PC and vise versa :)
      • It's got a rather funky three cylinder shape that would not fit in a PC and vise versa...

        That sounds like the power cord that connects to the transformer on my Dell laptop, and several other small appliances I've seen. It's not the typical power cord that PCs and monitors typically use, but it's still fairly common in other uses.

        --Jim
      • Considering I have a dead power cord, let me know if you find a source for other cords like that. Apple insisted I'd have to buy a new power supply for my iBook - I wasn't allowed to replace the cord.

        • Re:in other news (Score:3, Informative)

          by imadork ( 226897 )
          Considering I have a dead power cord, let me know if you find a source for other cords like that. Apple insisted I'd have to buy a new power supply for my iBook - I wasn't allowed to replace the cord.

          Depending on the model of your power supply, pbparts.com [pbparts.com] may be helpful. I purchased a few extra cords for my iBook's yo-yo adaptor from them, although I had to look in the Pismo section to find it. (Yo-Yo Type Adapter Cord (M7332))

  • Other enhancments. (Score:5, Informative)

    by juuri ( 7678 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:29PM (#4462940) Homepage
    Search the forums on Ars and you will see that a large problem with the TiBooks is that the antenna inside often shifts during transport. There is a simple fix where you find the antenna and simply push it back into the proper place and the range suddenly increases to almost iBook like quality.

    Wait even better, here is the thread:

    http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tp c&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=3480972435 [infopop.net]
    • That link doesn't seem to work for me.
      • It appears that you have to have a session cookie from the top level of ArsTechnica's discussion boards before you can look at individual messages. So deep linking doesn't work.

        Try searching for "TiBook antenna" in the forums there.

        I hate websites that do this...

    • I just did this and it WORKS. In my basement office I get ZERO reception, maybe one bars flickers on for a second or two every few days (I use an ethernet cable when I'm down here). After doing this little trick I'm getting three bars and a workable connection (four bars if I adjust my position - I'll have to move my desk)

      From the threads on Ars it looks like you could get even better reception if you could do the same thing to the antenna on the other side. It does seem (just playing around with it right now) that it favors the side with the battery. It seems I get better reception if I rotate the book so that the side with the battery (where I just adjusted the antenna) I get better reception than if the other side (with the DVD drive) is facing the base station.
      • As a fellow powerbook G4 user, I feel your pain at needing to use an Ethernet cable. Here you have a laptop which in my case, is worth about two months salary.. and if you want to connect it to a network you have two choices. Choice 1 is to use Airport.. which depending on which direction you're facaing and what elevation you're at, will drive you insane.. or Choice 2, to use an Ethernet cable. The downside of using an Ethernet cable, is that they're almost impossible to remove. Great planning Apple. I really think the Ethernet ports in these should have been mounted upside down.. would have made things so much easier.
    • I can't believe that's all it took to improve my airport signal. Not that my apt is huge, but now I get 4 bars strength everywhere inside, instead of 0-2 in the bedroom. This little "part" must have come loose in like EVERY tibook ever made. I'm speechless, stupified. I used to work for Apple, they've got fleets of Ti's out there, and noone's ever mentioned this. Must be a new "discovery". Any rate, thanks for pointing it out!

  • Ho hum (Score:3, Informative)

    by Olentangy ( 118364 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:30PM (#4462951)
    I've been using my old Lucent 802.11b PC-card in my old TiBook for some time because the internal card has such poor range.

    The driver up on source forge works fine.

    Fine, but how is this news?

  • How does it affect battery life? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06.email@com> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:38PM (#4463011)
    If the new card is pumping out 200 milliwatts of radio signal as opposed to the usual 30- to 100-milliwatt range of most 802.11b cards, what is the hit on battery life?
    • Probably hardly at all. Radio transmitters are rather efficient in the power stages nowadays and 200mW is very low compared to the screen consumption.

      • Automatic power control (Score:3, Informative)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
        A lot of radio devices nowadays (Some WLAN cards included) support automatic power control - Power is automatically reduced to the minimum needed for communication.

        The RF portion is probably in the 20-40% range. Either way, it's a difference of maybe 2 watts consumption vs. 1 watt consumption at the worst, which is a tiny fraction of the power consumed by most laptops these days...
    • Well, since you'll be able to take your pr0n-link anywhere, I imagine you'll be surfing that much more, and draining the battery to a greater extent. It's not so much the antenna, but the availability of the connection.

  • This is what I do (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If I'm having problems with range on the internal Airport card, I put in my PCMCIA card (in linux) and use that.

    Don't usually need it at work or at school, but if I'm really having problems with signal strength, the PCMCIA card works much better. Also get much better reception for war driving. I love kismet [kismetwireless.net]

    .:diatonic:.

  • I switched. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:43PM (#4463049) Homepage Journal

    I was a Mac user for many years..
    [insert pic of attractive woman]
    ..but the terrible range of the TiBook 802.11b they had was just too much.
    I bought a Windows XP based laptop and now my range is all I've ever dreamed of, I'm not locked into one company's hardware and my breath is minty fresh.

    - Val

  • As a Mac loyalist... (Score:4, Funny)

    by SPYvSPY ( 166790 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @12:49PM (#4463086) Homepage
    ...this story is an utter insult.

    Why don't you write up something interesting (and useful to me), like how to get Wi-Fi running on my Newton.
  • 200mW cards only output more power they have the same input sensetivity so I doubt it's going to actually yeild much better range. Since the cards antenna is still inside the box so to speak.

    • Bzzt... Wrong... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7@@@cornell...edu> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @02:15PM (#4463724) Homepage
      If the company spent the time and money to modify the Prism2/2.5/3 reference designs for 200 mW transmit, there's a good chance they improved receive sensitivity too.

      Not sure about the Engenius card listed in this article, but it is a close relative of the Demarctech ReliaWave 200 mW card, which has a receive sensitivity spec that's significantly better (-96 dBm) than even Orinoco cards, which are one of the best ones receive-wise. FAR better than average Prism2 cards, which suck.

      And you're also wrong about the antenna position - Look at the pictures in the article, the antenna is on the end of the card, it is NOT inside the box.

      Lastly, the article mentions availability of an external antenna option for these cards - Not an option for the internal AirPort card.

      These three things added up equals a solution that will blow away the internal AirPort configuration away.

      • Oops, forgot linkage... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
        Info on the Demarctech card:

        http://www.demarctech.com/products/reliawave-rwz /r eliawave-rwz-200mw-prism2-5-pcmcia-card.html

        They get pretty good reviews on the NetStumbler forums.

  • Wired and Macs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @01:01PM (#4463167)
    Why is it that almost every other day Wired has an article about Mac-users doing something wacky. I thought maybe it was because alot of Mac users out there were doing really interesting things like the guy who totes all the old Macs around to raves and sets up old school game LANs. But now I wonder... does Wired report every time a Mac user picks his nose? Some of their past stories were a little questionable, but this one is downright stupid. And I love the title "Mac Toters Push Wireless Bounds", wow, look at me, according to Wired I must be pushing the boundaries of my coffee, I'm ADDING SUGAR.
    I love my Mac, and I enjoy reading about other Mac users and their quirks, but come on Wired, keep a sense of reality here. Wired is about CULTURE, not technology. The past articles were always about the personalities using Macs to do unique things, but this one reads like a survey review of WiFi cards out of MacAddict.
    • Is there a HOWTO somewhere on this sugar in the coffee thing? Will it work with my system? I tried it once but I got stuck because my espresso machine only has one mouse button.

  • The external antenna (Score:5, Informative)

    by thefinite ( 563510 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @01:06PM (#4463201)
    I like *not* having an external antenna on my TiPB. My laptop constantly goes in and out of my school bag. I prefer not having to pay extra attention to a little peice of plastic sticking out in these and other such situations.

    Besides, there are ways to improve the range of the built-in card (I get great range). This discussion thread [macnet2.com] gives some interesting info.
    • I like *not* having an external antenna on my TiPB. My laptop constantly goes in and out of my school bag. I prefer not having to pay extra attention to a little peice of plastic sticking out in these and other such situations.
      I agree completely. I had a G3 PowerBook (Lombard, not Pismo, so no internal AirPort slot -- running Linux no less!) with a Lucent card before my TiBook. I love my Lombard: it makes a great Linux laptop. But the Lucent card was a pain to pull in and out and start/stop the drivers.

      Having integrated wireless is so nice: you just open the lid and it's on; close the lid and it's off. Nothing to insert or remove; nothing to type, nothing to click.

      Also, for the record, the later model TiBooks improved the wireless reception (I have a spanking new 800 MHz model). I get reception virtually as good as my Lombard got (at least for all the places I do wireless). Only once was it slightly worse. But in my house, cafe, and at work, the base station isn't far so it's not an issue.

    • I like *not* having an external antenna on my TiPB. My laptop constantly goes in and out of my school bag. I prefer not having to pay extra attention to a little peice of plastic sticking out in these and other such situations.

      The point is that the range on the TiPB is bad because the internal antenna is enclosed inside a metal Faraday cage (the titanium laptop shell). The integrated wireless nics in Thinkpads, Latitudes, Evos, etc., get much better range because the notebook shell is a metal composite or a plastic. They're not knocking integrated antennas, just integrated antennas that are wrapped in metal, which don't function as well.
      • The point is that the range on the TiPB is bad because the internal antenna is enclosed inside a metal Faraday cage

        This may still be true, but I just did the "remove-battery - press-on-serial-number" trick mentioned elswhere in this discussion and to my astonishment IT WORKED. I am getting a good connection with my TiBook in a room where previously I got ZERO signal. I'm so pleased right now I'm going to have to leave this discussion altogether. Otherwise I'll be seriously tempted to reply to every single post singing the Hossannas of this little trick.
    • I like *not* having an external antenna on my TiPB. My laptop constantly goes in and out of my school bag. I prefer not having to pay extra attention to a little peice of plastic sticking out in these and other such situations.

      You need a better backpack bag. I have a Thinkpad with a Lucent card that sticks out, and I have never had an issue once I found my Tumi backpack [tumi.com]. That bag absolutely rocks. It's the best made. Tough as iron, pockets sized to fit CDs/media, a handle on the top, a "file cabinet" pocket for docs and loose papers, and really comfortable straps.

      The actual compartment that holds the laptop has a foam liner (which is removeable if you want to carry normal stuff) that protects the sides and bottom. There's about five inches in between the laptop and the top of the bag, so the Lucent card sticks up in the air and is nicely protected.

      If you need a more general purpose backpack which also carries a laptop, then check out Tumi's other models [tumi.com].

      -B

  • Plug in a Lucent / Orinco / Wavelan / this months brand name ... PCMCIA card and the Apple drivers work with it. And they all have little rubber plugs over the external antenna jacks ... No instability, no problems ... And, the cards are cheaper than the suggested cards if you look around for them. Alas Apple won't give you firmware updates for them (or the ones in the "hack") so you'll need virtual PC (or a real one) in some cases to update to the latest and greatest firmware. Sheessh ... Hack it not was. ohhhh.
  • I don't know very much about wireless architectures, and what is compatible with what, but will the EnGenius cards work with the Airport?

    I have a TiBook and an Airport, and have found the combination almost useless. As soon as there is a *partial* wall between the laptop and the Airport, the signal fades, and then starts to drop, until it finally won't connect anymore (forget about trying to span floors!). I have to physically reset the Airport to make it work once the signal is 'gone'.

    I'm not sure if the Airport is defective or what -it works fine when I have visual contact within 30 feet, but further than that, or introduce any obstructions, and all bets are off.

    I've read about an invasive hack for the Airport where you add a 'signal booster', but I'm thinking that sliding in a 3rd party network card is much simpler, assuming that the drivers are stable.

  • boosts reception for incoming network packets (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @01:13PM (#4463257) Homepage Journal
    The EnGenius pumps out 200 milliwatts of radio signal, compared with the 30- to 100-milliwatt range of most 802.11b cards, and
    similarly boosts reception for incoming network packets.[emphasis mine]


    Huh? Can anyone explain this? Seems flat out wrong to me, but what do I know?

    -Peter
    • Not all receive preamps are created equal.

      Some are noisier than others. For example, you can make a cheapo preamp using a MiniCircuits MMIC for $10, it has a NF of 3-5 dB

      Some of MCL's units are better, in the 2.5 dB range - A full preamp unit might cost $20 to make

      You can get a 2.4 GHz preamp with a 0.5 dB nF for $100 or so.

      And there are parts worse than the MCL units - Even a 5 dB NF MCL unit put in front of an Orinoco will yield significant improvements.

      So in short, the people who made this card upgraded the receiver performance to match the transmitter. (This is why there is a point to those 500 mW external amps - All of them include pretty nice recieve preamps too.)

  • Use the lucent cards? (Score:2, Informative)

    by sahmed ( 254826 )
    Just get a lucent Orinoco card. Stick it in an apple and it shows up as an Airport Card. The airport is simply the lucent cards without the antenna.

    The lucent cards also come with a jack for an external antenna.

    How is sticking a pcmcia card a hack, or even newsworthy?

  • Range in TiPB (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pavera ( 320634 )
    my business partner has an airport card in his Ti, we have a wireless net at our office,
    he gets much better range than I do with my laptop and a prism chipset wnic. He can wander all around outside our building, and he never drops his connection, I on the other hand am lucky if I get reception on both floors inside the building (the ap is on the top floor, and generally on the bottom floor I don't connect, he does. So I haven't seen these problems with airport cards not getting good reception.
  • Unless you are doing point-to-point or frequency hopping. The spec sheet for the card ( from www.engeniustech.com ) says it's using DSSS, so it's not frequency hopping. How are they able to claim FCC compliance with this thing?
  • Now that the whole Slashdot crew has TiBooks, be prepared to see a lot more trivial stories like this about them.

    According to the Los Angeles Times, the KGB has discovered that if you hold your Powerbook sideways, you get this cool portrait view with the picture on its side. Also, check out a way to flip the fn and ctrl keys [gnufoo.org]. Neat!

    P.S. I have one, too.

  • Cisco LEAP? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dadragon ( 177695 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2002 @03:15PM (#4464124) Homepage
    My University uses Cisco LEAP to keep unauthorised people off their wireless network. PCs work with Cisco cards, and MacOS X 10.[12] work with internal Airport cards.

    When it asks for your password, just use , and it works. Can you do this with a cheap card and drivers?

  • WiReD says the TiBook may become the "Ultimate Wardriving Machine". As an owner of a TiBook/667, let me tell you why this laptop isn't going to be the ultimate wardriving machine, at least not without a lot of work:

    1) Lack of decent OS X wardriving software -- Yes, there is MacStumbler [macstumbler.com] but it does not support the WirelessDriver Project [sourceforge.net] yet. On top of that, it's been a while since the last release of MacStumbler. Is it still being actively developed?

    2) Lack of (free) GPS hardware support and lack of GPS integration into MacStumbler.

    3) Suitability for in-care use -- Let's face it, the TiBook is fragile as hell. The outer casing is easily dented. Secondly, it's not a small laptop and doesn't fit easily on the dashboard or even on the passenger seat of my Honda. To solve this, we need to come up with some kind of padded mount.

  • Would it ever be normal for this to appear on /.? "Oh, I just stuck a card in my iBook and after I ported drivers to it's nice... open source... UNIX... core *pauses to watch geeks salivate*, I got it slashdotted." If it weren't Apple, this wouldn't happen. And why are there now 8 different "Apple" topics? And the Aqua theme?? Thank you.

    This is not a troll. Or at least it wasn't intended that way. It's just an (admittedly off-topic) observation.

    Do your worst, mods.
    --j

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