Boost PB's AP reception?

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Krest's picture
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Last seen: 16 years 2 weeks ago
Joined: Sep 29 2004 - 12:39
Posts: 96
Boost PB's AP reception?

Is there a way to boost the PowerBook's (PB G4 Al 15") AirPort reception? I was wondering since the iBook G4 has a better reception than the PB, due to shielding by the Aluminum case I think...

Maybe wrapping some copper wire around the screen? Wink

davintosh's picture
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Last seen: 10 years 9 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
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It's the metal case...

... that makes reception so poor. I've got a 500MHz Titanium PB, and it suffers the same problem. There is an outfit that makes a retrofit antenna for the PB's, but it basically consists of an antenna that gets stuck to the back of the screen with double-face tape and has a wire that runs to it from the AirPort card through the PC card slot. Bad hack.

I've been contemplating doing something like that with mine, except running the antenna wire through a hole drilled in the back. I'm not exactly sure what antennas are available, but once the wire is out of the box, the antenna could be attached somewhat inconspicuously somewhere on the machine. I've toyed with the idea of using the antenna that comes with the thing, but it's wound around inside the screen housing, and I'm just plain scared of taking that thing apart. My next option would be to pull the antenna from a dead iMac, then attaching that to the exterior of the PB. The big thing is to get the antenna outside of the metal casing; once that's accomplished things should improve greatly.

Of course, you'd want to do something like this long after any warranty you might have has expired, cuz once you start mucking with the innards & cutting holes, that's pretty much it for warranty fixes.

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