Goodwill find - Airport Extreme Base Station A1408

[eyoungren]

Found for $13 at the Goodwill! Not pictured is the powerbrick, which the Goodwill had in a separate area and I also picked up.

Now to integrate this into my home network!

 

[Bruninho]

I actually have three of these here 👀

 

[Raging Dufus]

Found for $13 at the Goodwill! Not pictured is the powerbrick, which the Goodwill had in a separate area and I also picked up.

View attachment 1758531

Now to integrate this into my home network!

Nice! I made a good score on this A1521 a few months ago, haven't had time to do anything with it yet. Picked it up at an estate sale, on the last day when everything was half price. I don't know how the thing was still there, but I only paid $8.50 for it!

 

[eyoungren]

Nice! I made a good score on this A1521 a few months ago, haven't had time to do anything with it yet. Picked it up at an estate sale, on the last day when everything was half price. I don't know how the thing was still there, but I only paid $8.50 for it!

View attachment 1758542

Yeah, I was thinking maybe this is some older device, I wasn't expecting it to be a dual-band 5th gen. Serial number says it was produced in July of 2012. It was buried in the routers there at the Goodwill and there was a guy ahead of me that was intently digging through all of them. Apparently, he either missed this or didn't care.

I did have to laugh though as one review on the device said that to share a drive it has to be HFS+ formatted. So, you mean like 99% of the drives I have already in the majority Macintosh home network I have? Yeah, no problem!

I already have a dual band AC router so this will be slaved, I just need to figure out where to put it and for what reason. I do however, plan to attach a USB hub to it and USB drives.

Real nice what you picked up and that price was killer!

 

[Bruninho]

Do any of you have a Time Capsule? It was a saving grace for me when my last Windows PC years ago was a victim of ransomware 🤣 I still do manual backups on it until today but this time for my Mac. So I can get it all back for when I buy a M1

 

[z970]

@Raging Dufus I see you have a pair of Creative Pebble Pluses in the background.

If I may ask, how do they sound, and how do they compare to other speakers (like the Apple Pro Speakers for example, if you happen to own those)?

As I'm sure you could guess, I ask for the purpose of pre-investment research.

 

[weckart]

Nice find. I also saw one for a little more yesterday and a boxed AExpress 802.11n for about the same and contemplated both but ultimately had no immediate use for one. I relegated the same model Extreme to my bedroom router fed via ethernet as that is a dead spot in our house but I suppose everyone is moving either to powerlines or mesh setups these days, so even the price of 802.11ac setups is dropping finally.

Word of warning, these can degrade over time. My very first AExtreme started dropping its range after a while and became unreliable. Seems like heat build up eventually can affect the card inside but the 5Gen one I have is still a trouper.

 

[Jubadub]

[...] there was a guy ahead of me that was intently digging through all of them. Apparently, he either missed this or didn't care.

I certainly wouldn't care, if I was that guy. No ethernet = no deal. Edit: Except now I just duckduckgo-ed it to see its back. Now I care. lol

 

[jeyf]

i have one for the house, dont even want to think how old it is.
meets our needs tho

 

[eyoungren]

Nice find. I also saw one for a little more yesterday and a boxed AExpress 802.11n for about the same and contemplated both but ultimately had no immediate use for one. I relegated the same model Extreme to my bedroom router fed via ethernet as that is a dead spot in our house but I suppose everyone is moving either to powerlines or mesh setups these days, so even the price of 802.11ac setups is dropping finally.

Word of warning, these can degrade over time. My very first AExtreme started dropping its range after a while and became unreliable. Seems like heat build up eventually can affect the card inside but the 5Gen one I have is still a trouper.

Thank you for the advice, that is good to know.

This is my primary router:



An, ASUS RT-AC3200 (my T-Mobile 4G/LTE Cellspot is behind it). It's pumping out four networks (2x 2.4Ghz and 2x 5Ghx) and is 802.11AC (and Gigabit ethernet). The neighborhood is crowded with WiFi and my ISP has a hotspot in the neighborhood as well (free access). All the way around, I'm going to have to try very hard to find a purpose for adding another network. If the AE device degrades, I'm not sure I am going to notice.

I am liking the fact that I can connect to USB drives though. For that reason alone I do have a purpose for it.

 

[eyoungren]

i have one for the house, dont even want to think how old it is.
meets our needs tho

If I didn't already have my ASUS, I'd probably use this as my primary router. I was using a D-Link 4-port router for 10 years and a Linksys after that, neither of which approached the capability of this Airport Extreme.

 

[eyoungren]

I certainly wouldn't care, if I was that guy. No ethernet = no deal. Edit: Except now I just duckduckgo-ed it to see its back. Now I care. lol

Yeah, Gigabit Ethernet sold me, LOL!

 

[Raging Dufus]

@Raging Dufus I see you have a pair of Creative Pebble Pluses in the background.

If I may ask, how do they sound, and how do they compare to other speakers (like the Apple Pro Speakers for example, if you happen to own those)?

As I'm sure you could guess, I ask for the purpose of pre-investment research.

I don't have any experience with Pebble Pluses, mine are Pebbles (no plus). Here's what I have:



Bear in mind, I'm no audiophile, but I'm very happy with these speakers, both the look and the sound. I never expected such great sound from a set of speakers that gets power from USB alone. As far as comparisons go, I do have a pair of Apple Pro speakers that I've had for years. Unfortunately, it's been years since I've had them hooked up to anything, so I can't really give you a legitimate comparison - but I don't feel like I'm lacking anything with the Pebbles. This has been true in my experience with everything made by Creative, so far it's all been good stuff.

 

[jeyf]

odd how the shipping box poped up here.
makes me want to buy a Peeble

 

[z970]

@Raging Dufus My mistake; I saw that they were black and thought they were Pluses. As far as I'm aware, the only difference is the addition of a subwoofer anyway.

Thank you very much for the helpful synopsis, I really appreciate that.

 

[Bruninho]

Here we use a TP-Link I think, as the wifi router. The Aiports (the small ones, express, and the big one as pictured above, there's two of them, one in my room) are spread around the house. The Time Capsule is in my dad's office room.

Some of the small airport express are coupled with speakers for sound from the roof of our living room Just fire up Apple Music from my iPhone, choose a song, and stream through AirPlay =)

*plays Highway To The Danger Zone*

 

[FNH15]

If I didn't already have my ASUS, I'd probably use this as my primary router. I was using a D-Link 4-port router for 10 years and a Linksys after that, neither of which approached the capability of this Airport Extreme.

I have a network of three AC Expresses running at my mother’s home. They’re all networked together via MoCA, and have been flawless and give excellent coverage through the 3500 sq ft home. Leagues better than any mesh system I’ve experienced. Rock solid reliability - they only reason they’ve ever restarted is when there’s a power outage or for firmware updates. The primary node has been in constant use since 2013, the other two have 2015 build dates. One of them does make some fan noise from time to time, however, so I’ll probably need to open it up at some point...

Can easily pull 350/20 from most anywhere in the home - which is exactly what Comcast is providing. I will say for best reliability it is a good idea to separate out the 2.4 and 5GHz bands.

I have an Amplifi Alien at my home, and while it’s excellent as well, I’d gladly trade it in for a new-generation AirPort Extreme if Apple ever came out with one.

 

[eyoungren]

All working now. Dropped a 2TB WD Green into the external and connected it up to the USB hub, which is connected to the AE. That's a 512GB USB stick in there too. Both drives are being shared over the network.

Also…I now have six WiFi networks (seven if I add the guest from the AE).

 

[crispApple]

Thats really cool! I am actually typing this using my 2006 imac i found at a st. Vincent De Paul thrift store for $17 a few months ago!

 

[eyoungren]

Final piece of the puzzle here.

My other external drive enclosure has a USB port. I've mainly used it for the eSATA and Firewire ports though as I've never had a USB Mini cable. I ordered one though, not even sure it would work - but it does. So, now I have 3TB of storage attached to the Airport Extreme.

PS. I transferred 18+ GB to the AE. Between USB 2.0, 802.11n and the throttling of the Airport Extreme to USB 1.0 speeds I managed to achieve this feat in apx. 34 hours. Attached to the AE, these drives will NEVER be used for backup or anything I regularly need to access. OMG!!!!!

 

[Slix]

Nice! The older AirPort Extremes are really cheap online too nowadays, so it's good you found a use for it. Gigabit Ethernet is always a welcomed thing. If nothing else, it works nicely as a Gigabit switch for a couple ports for extra computers.

 

[salamanderjuice]

Time capsules are dirt cheap online as well. I picked up a 2TB one for like $30 off eBay. I was planning to replace the drive but it still works so I let it be.

The USB 2.0 speeds on the Airport Extremes are the biggest Achilles heel of the things. It's just glacial even over wired ethernet. That was part of why I picked up the TC. I could technically use the AC AE I have as one but it was just so darn slow. As a router it's been pretty good although I dislike how all configuration is through an app which is a PITA as it only works on Apple devices.

 

[eyoungren]

If nothing else, it works nicely as a Gigabit switch for a couple ports for extra computers.

I do have it connected directly to my main router, but that was primarily because I was too lazy to run another cable to the switch. I do appreciate the couple of extra ports on the AE, but as you can see I'm not really hurting for ports.

 

[eyoungren]

Well, cool! My NAS has a backup function and it was pretty easy to connect it to the USB drive that my AE is sharing! Letting my NAS do the work while all my other Macs are free!

 

[barracuda156]

Airport Extreme + USB drive is functionally identical to Time Capsule, kind of?

I bought Airport Extreme time ago, but desperately failed to configure it to join wifi network (which it actually should be able to, when using older Airport Utility). It is sitting idle now.