ibook pcmcia???

i believe airport or extreme cards are modified mini-pci, like the ones for centrino notebooks and others with integrated wifi only well, slightly different.
here's a mini-pci wifi card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833106219
as always, could be horrendously wrong
edit: the ibook does not, and has never had a pc card slot, nor has the 12" g4 powerbook

Under the keyboard is an airport-only slot waiting to be filled. You would not be able to put anything else in there.

The other thing you should know is that probably a year ago Apple pretty much stopped making the Airport cards in favor of the Airport extreme cards (that your computer cannot use). If you wanted to add wireless to your iBook, you could probably find an Airport card used, but you might be hard-pressed to find a new one.

pdpardue said:

That is why i was looking for an airport card, hoping that someone else might still have one in stock. Even a third part compatable airport type card will suffice. anyone have any thoughts? ebay seems like an overcharging bloated website these days.

thanks

Click to expand...

There are no third-party ones that will help.
I found mine for $79 on the interweb.
http://lacomputercompany.com/cgi-bin/rpcart/featured.cgi?group=air
they have it for $78. One dollar savings!!

Smalldog typically also has them (original airport cards) available.

pdpardue said:

Well, I am definitly looking to not spend over $100 from smalldog, and ebay is baren of anything other then the base stations. Anybody have one they would want to sell, or anyone adventurous enough to try using a standard pcmcia card rather then the apple airport card presupposing that you have one? Anybody want to get rid of a functional airport card for cheap? I would be willing to take the lowest bidder.

Click to expand...

I'm confused why you aren't satisfied with the poster who recommended lacomputercompany.com... they seem to have what you want for the price you are interested in. Beyond that, I do recall reading somewhere that the Airport card is simply a third party card repackaged and I believe some people were insinuating that you could use that third party card in place of Airport. I don't remember where I saw that, but if the previously mentioned sites don't work, you might be able to find some info somewhere.

Also, when you say eBay is barren, did you actually look?

Airport Alternative

You can get a working Airport Card in your internal airport slot quite easy and dead cheap: Try to get a Lucent Wavelan Card Silver, pry of all the casing, put it into your iBook, connect antenna, done.

Lucent Wavelan Silver Card should not exceed US$20,-.

Pictures to be found here: http://faddh.dyndns.org/lucent/

Careful with the WaveLANs

While the old Lucent WaveLAN cards are the same chips as an Apple AirPort card, I'd be wary of trying to cram one of those into an iBook. The newer iBooks are even more tight inside than the clamshell shown in that picture. Besides, the website only says "usable... I think..." That doesn't sound too promising.

From what I recall, the original AirPort cards (and their sockets,) use modified PCMCIA (PC Card) connections. Regular PC Cards will not work in the socket, and an AirPort card will not identify itself in a PC Card socket.

Likewise, AirPort Express uses a modified mini-PCI connector. mini-PCI cards are meant to be internal-only notebook expansion cards, and are used for network cards, wireless, and modems in PC notebooks. Again, to my knowledge, the implementation in Apple's products is specific to AirPort Express cards. (So even if you found a third-party mini-PCI 802.11g card for sale, it wouldn't work in your shiny new PowerBook.)

The other thing to note from the above is that AirPort and AirPort Express are two completely different beasts, card-wise. They are *NOT* compatible. There is no possible way to cram one into the socket for the other.

It´s perfectly usable, ...

... those are my personal modifications and pictures on mine and my girlfriend´s machines which are still in heavy use. I added another picture: http://faddh.dyndns.org/lucent/

Right now I am using the dual usb ibook with the lucent wavelan inside the airport slot. It also works with the clamshell, only the keyboard is slighlty more bend, but otherwise everything is behaving accordingly. The minimal moved up keyboard in the dual usb iBook is hardly noticable.

I used a Lucent Wavelan Silver Card coming from a broken (internal power supply) Airport Graphite Basestation, which via the OS 9 Aiport 2.0.2 update was turned into a 128bit Lucent Wavelan Gold Card.

It´s definitely the cheapest way and most compatible one, too, to outfit old g3 based iBooks with Airport networking. All original Airport Cards were basically Lucent Wavelan Cards, inlcuding the Aiport Graphite Basestation.

I never talked about Airport Extreme. There – for older ethernet 100mbit equipped computers – you can take a Linksys WET54 ethernet wlan adapter to get 54mbit wlan/airport express networking.

But you need a bit of courage to open up the card firsthand, that´s true, and not be scared too much. It´s not difficult at all.

giffut said:

... those are my personal modifications and pictures on mine and my girlfriend´s machines which are still in heavy use. I added another picture: http://faddh.dyndns.org/lucent/

Right now I am using the dual usb ibook with the lucent wavelan inside the airport slot. It also works with the clamshell, only the keyboard is slighlty more bend, but otherwise everything is behaving accordingly. The minimal moved up keyboard in the dual usb iBook is hardly noticable.

Click to expand...

Ah. I thought you just randomly found that page. Well, then, I guess it does work. I may have to try it now.

giffut said:

I used a Lucent Wavelan Silver Card coming from a broken (internal power supply) Airport Graphite Basestation, which via the OS 9 Aiport 2.0.2 update was turned into a 128bit Lucent Wavelan Gold Card.

It´s definitely the cheapest way and most compatible one, too, to outfit old g3 based iBooks with Airport networking. All original Airport Cards were basically Lucent Wavelan Cards, inlcuding the Aiport Graphite Basestation.

Click to expand...

heh. I have the same card, for the same reason! I also have a WaveLAN Gold that was bought for my PeeCee notebook back in the day. (Since that was the only card available at the time.)

Also watch your card names and what you are searching for

The G3 iBook takes the "Airport" Card
The G4 iBook takes the "Airport Extreme" card
you cannot substitute one for the other, they are physically incompatible.

The "Airport Express" on the other hand is a wireless router that plugs into an AC socket.

Crammed a WaveLAN into an iMac.

Well, I succeeded. After some careful movements, I managed to get a WaveLAN Gold card to fit into the AirPort slot of a slot-load iMac. The antenna sticks out way farther than a real AirPort card, so it's at a bit of an angle, just barely clearing the DIMM socket, but it works just fine. Tiger detects it as a standard AirPort card, and it connects to my AirPort Extreme base station just fine.

wavelan question

This may be an absurd question, but do you have to take the entire card apart to fit it into the ibook or can you just remove the plastic tip of it? I've been looking for an affordable alternative for a while and the only one I've found that seems to be perfect is the Sony PCWA-C150S and that's almost impossible to find now. I'm considering modifying another card like this one but I have never done it before.

Thanks.

TO:
jcbazemore
macrumors newbie

This is my second thread of the night that has confused me because newbies have reopened ancient threads. Very confusing, if interesting.

sorry to confuse but this is the most recent thread I've been able to find around the net, based on last post date, dealing with this topic. I'm relatively new to Mac's and would like to make my Ibook wireless without breaking the bank on an airport card if possible.

To fit it in my iMac, which has lots of empty air around where the AirPort card goes, I just removed the plastic antenna cover. Note that unlike the AirPort card, the WaveLAN cards have circuit board that is longer than the PC Card slot length. (i.e. there was circuit board under the entire plastic cover.) This means that the WaveLAN card, even with all of its cover removed, is longer than an AirPort card.

Check giffut's page for how to make it work in an iBook.

Wavelan card iBook installation

First off I want to thank Giffut for the pics and helpful instructions. I would have never realized you could do this. I purchased a Wavelan card on eBay for $16 (including shipping!) about a month ago. Cracked open the card and inserted it in the iBook. It's been working like a champ ever since. The keyboard bulge is pronounced. I'm leary of closing the display, especially since that will cause the raised part of the keyboard to press against the display. If I needed to carry it around a lot I'd probably just insert something where the top meets the keyboard rest to keep it from closing all the way. But the point is that this "hack" works great and is amazingly cheap.

Airport Alternative iMac

Thank you all so much for the info about the Lucent Wavelan cards. I just installed a Wavelan Silver Turbo in my iMac G4/800 Flat Panel, and it is working fine. It shows up as an Airport Card and is interfacing with my Airport Express base station. I did have one problem, though. After cracking open the Wavelan Silver card and inserting it into the iMac, the antenna was not long enought to connect to the card due to the card length. I got around this cutting the antenna two inches above its termination and then splicing two inches of wire into it as an extension. This took me a little while because the antenna wire has a very tine core and a wire mesh shielding that are both on the small side. I assumed that the shielding was connected to ground, so I not only splice the core but also the shielding. $25 and 2 hours (I am not that good at soldering).

Ibook G3 IBM High Rate PCI Card

Hey guys, I used the instructions here...

http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/662/diy-airport-for-that-old-ibook

on my ibook G3 800mhz with osx 10.3.9 and was able to use an IBM High Rate 128 card as an Airport Card. It was actually pretty easy and worked because the IBM High Rate card has a Lucent Chipset same as the Airport card and same as the Lucent Wavelan Silver card. I just pluged it in and powered on. It told ma there was a new airport card installed and uses all the original mac osx airport software.