Taking Apart An Airport Extreme Base Station

Farley Mullet writes "As seen on MacSlash, here is a link to page documenting one man's dissection of an Airport Extreme Base Station. It's pretty neat to see what Apple crammed in there, including (gasp!) a chip from AMD!"

Comments

Airport - Laptop

[Richardsonke1]

It says that the main processor is a mini-PCI card. Does that mean that it could resonably be put in a computer without the base station? My Dell Inspirion 8200 uses a mini-PCI card for wireless, and if I could possibly find drivers for it, i.e. for use in linux, that would be so cool. Imagine upgrading your laptop to 54 Mbps yourself (with no PCI card sticking out the side).

Re:Airport - Laptop

[schappim]

It's also quite interesting to note, that whilst Apple is courting Intel (CEO special guest @ Keynote), Apple is still using AMD in their base station!

Re:Airport - Laptop

[GreatOgre]

If you follow the article's link to AMD's website from the article, you see that the CPU supports Linux; so it shouldn't take long.

Questions that I have. On AMD's page, they say that power usage is given in mW for the chip at 333, 400, and 500 MHz are 400, 700, and 1.2. Do they mean 1.2 watts (and hence 1200 mW) or does it actually use 1.2 mW? (I know that it's 1.2 W, but I wish it was 1.2 mW!) More seriously though, why aren't we seeing these chips in more things, like say mini-ITX boards? Of course, I'm not a chip and board designer; so this could be senseless dribble.

Re:Airport - Laptop

[Lennie]

Supposedly it runs vxWorks (I got a link to this site, in the same discussion: http://www-hft.ee.tu-berlin.de/~strauman/airport/a irport.html):

Important Note About the New Airport Base Station (AKA "Snow")

The new model of the Airport Base Station which features two Ethernet ports is a completely different device. Don't even dream about using etherboot and the linux port discussed here on that one.

* The old "graphite" station is an embedded i486-PC running an embedded BIOS and the KarlBridge software.
* The new "snow" station uses an embedded (860 series) PowerPC and it runs vxWorks. While it should certainly be possible to port Linux to that device, too, no efforts have been undertaken, however. I have previously run linux on the 860 - a neat device.
* This little utility helps extracting a zlib compressed part from a binary file by using brute force :-). You must not use it on the "snow" firmware binary, though, as this could violate the license.


The site discusses the use of the earlier version which uses a 486-chip, also AMD ? to run Linux on.

Two things

[nilepoc]

That huge heat sink leads me to a good idea of why the 12" pBook is so hot.

And the AMD chips have been in the previous base stations as well. (or so I was told, when I posted this comment on macslash) But it does kind of clear up a great deal of speculation on what Apple and AMD were up to.

I posted this comment on macslash as an AC

WiFi & AMD

[LamerX]

I just took apart my Mac LC & LCII. The both had AMD chips in them, not the processor, but some other chip was labeled with an AMD logo on it.

Also, for more WiFi info, these are some good links...

http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/wiki/?Apple

http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/WirelessLin ks

http://www.gulker.com/2002/10/10.html

I believe that most wireless access points are just PCMCIA wireless cards with some extra software and hardware controlling it, that's why prices of these are coming down so much.

"AMD processor?? But does it run Linux?"

[Phantasmo]

Well, kinda.

The project hasn't been updated in a couple of months, and it breaks Ethernet bridging, but the idea of running Linux on a sleek little gadget from Apple is still geeky enough to be interesting.

The Airport is great, but to configure it you need to be running OS 9 or X - horrid news for a high school that I was working at a few months ago. Every machine was running OS 8.6, including the one teacher-owned laptop. Every student-owned laptop was Windows-based.
I brought in my laptop (which runs Debian) and gave the Airport Base Station Configurator a try, but to no avail.

So - cool device, but it needs to be easier to configure or modify.

Re:Ridiculous UK power plugs

[WasterDave]

Australian ones (actually New Zealand in my case, but we use the same plugs) are overpoweringly stupid. Not as bad as the US ones, but stupid all the same.

The two live pins are at the top of the socket. This means that when a toddler stands on the cable, as she tends to extremely often, the two live pins are exposed with a gap just the right size for an inquisitive toddler finger. Stupid fuckers, having me running round duct taping all the power plugs to the wall.

The UK sockets are the tits. Best designed in the world. For a start the "garage doors" onto the live pins don't even open until the earth pin is in. Then by the time the live pins are touching inside the socket, the only exposed bits are plastic. Totally toddler proof AND they don't fall out.

Dave