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Taking Apart An Airport Extreme Base Station

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gettin-all-up-and-inside-that dept.

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!"

4 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Airport - Laptop by Richardsonke1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

    --
    "Men lie."
    "Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
    -Dan Brown
    1. Re:Airport - Laptop by GreatOgre · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Two things by nilepoc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  3. WiFi & AMD by LamerX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.