Slashdot Mirror
How To Add An External Antenna To AirPort Base Station
An anonymous reader writes "I came across this article yesterday on how to add an external antenna to an airport base station 2.0 in order to extend its range. Takes about 20-30 mins to complete and with the instructions is very easy."
Not after the last fiasco. I can't understand Apple's warranty department. They're virtually no help
I have a G4 powermac, a 1.42GHz machine which worked well and for the most part kept me occupied and did the tasks I needed doing. The noise however, was something that's been driving me, my wife and my pets crazy. The dog wouldn't come in the same room as she's scared of the thing. She also attacks the hairdryer in the bathroom, and I think that's a subtle hint that the thing was too loud and what it sounded like.
Looking deeper into the machine I found a couple of fans that when running at a certain speed reached a phenomenal noise level. With the computer in its cabinet they were bad enough but I felt like I was near a jet taking off if I had the Mac up on my desk. I pulled those fans out and they looked like they could be replaced by standard, quieter fans. I took one from the last PC I'd built (yes I'm multiplatform) and it fit well, so a quick trip into town I bought a pair and installed those.
The G4 was fantastic! The reduction in noise was something I could immediately appreciate, but my happiness didn't last too long. Within half an hour the machine was locking up and crashing. I opened it once more to see I hadn't been a moron and done anything stupid, when I noticed the apple supplied heatsink was BURNING hot. I mean really hot, I couldn't bear to touch it more than momentarily. I never trusted that heatsink, the sheer bulk of it looked like it was made to be produced easily and not cool properly. I ditched that heatsink (after letting the machine cool down for an hour!) and replaced it with a Zalman flower. I'd never seen cooling like it could do, so it was the logical choice. The heatsink for the G4 attached differently, but it was easy enough to adapt the zalman with insulated wire tied underneath the CPU board.
This worked a little better and the powermac booted, and stayed working far longer. For about three days, and from then on it wouldn't boot. No chime, just fans spinning and no video. Even the hard drive barely ticked a couple of times. By now I was furious, my previous macs had given me little trouble but this one was a pain. I phoned the apple center nearest me, and as it was only a few months old I was assured everything should be covered by warranty. It turns out because I had MODIFIED the computer that my warranty was void. wtf? I added a superior cooling system to the machine, quietened it, IMPROVED it in every way, and they deny my claim? I was livid at the store manager, but couldn't get past his denseness. Know what else? Apple keep on record what you've done. I replaced the original loud fan, the original heatsink and tried once more, and again my claim was refused on the basis I'd done the damage myself.
I'm still a Mac user, but a very annoyed one still waiting on repairs to my G4 that I have to pay for myself, and that I consider are Apple's warranty responsibility that they've gotten out of having to pay for by some stupid clause. Read the fine print guys.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but I need to vent guys and here I hope I find sympathy! I HATE MAC'S
Today I spent the good part of five hours helping a friend at his freelance gig setup a Airport base with a titanum powerbook while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 5 hours. The amazing thing is at home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this MAC, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. Now, I got the job to fix this as I'm the "Computer Guy" and can generally help friends and family with there computer problems. I have never seen such a tragedy as the titanum powerbook!
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this TiBook at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
I don't, I really don't, see how Apple can claim to be tops in design. Even my A600 was a dream to work on compared to this and it was pretty compact too!. Anyway Ive talked my friend into getting rid of his mac addiction, he will definately be buying a Dell next!
I need to vent guys and here I hope I find sympathy! I HATE MACS
Today I spent the good part of five hours helping a friend with a titanum powerbook put an 802.11 card in, she bought an apple Airport one. The first amazing thing comes when it doesn't fit in the slot, but a quick call to the apple seller and they tell me it has to go INSIDE THE MACHINE. My friend had opted not to get them to install it as it was an extra $20 fee, so she took it home and I got the job as I'm the "Computer Guy" and can generally help friends and family with there computer problems. I have never seen such a tragedy of design as the TiBook!
First I had to take the entire thing apart. This, if you've been inside a laptop, is not an easy trivial task. It needs the battery and case to come off, the drive and optical drive to come out, and apples STUPID design inside them meant I had to file away some parts as they were put in without obviously meaning to be taken apart again. Now I know computers are throwaway things nowadays but that's ridiculous! We also had to use snips to cut some tiny pieces of shielding off to get to the right screws. I can see why they were charging so much to put the card in, she should have gone with that option! In the end finally I was able to lever up a part of the inside to push the airport card inside and click it in place. But that wasn't enough, an aerial cable then needed to be connected, and getting it out of its holder was another half hour of work where I had to pull the airport card out again!. Finally with it all back together it works. The inside I think is back where it should go. But, the back doesn't go back on how it should and I think it is a little bent.
I don't, I really don't, see how Apple can claim to be tops in design. Even my A600 was a dream to work on compared to this and it was pretty compact too! Why they couldn't put it in an easily accessed slot like normal PC notebooks I don't know. Anyway, I've talked my friend into getting rid of her Mac addiction, she will definitely be buying a Dell next!
You lift off the keyboard. Install the card. Replace keyboard.
Done.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Wiping your backside - a howto with easy to follow diagrams.
OK, how many of you thought of this site when he said that?
How to do absolutely anything to a Mac
- Back up your hard drive.
- Repair permissions.
- Zap the PRAM.
- Rebuild your desktop.
- Run Conflict Catcher, Norton Disk Doctor and DiskWarrior.
- Launch Terminal.
- Close Terminal.
- Reboot in single-user mode.
- Reinstall the previous version of the operating system, using the archive feature.
- Reboot in OS 9, and run ResEdit.
- Reseat the RAM board.
- Reset the PMU.
- Boot from the system disk.
And you're done!I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
Thanks for your letter. Being Catholic myself, I know exactly what you're talking about! It has always been our plan here at Apple Computer Inc to revolutionize personal computing with our high-quality and highly gay products.
I'm happy to answer your letter by letting you know that YES we will be releasing an entire hLife ("homo-life") software line. You'll be able to recognize it in stores by the small stylized logo depicting a large cock entering a tight anus with an Apple logo on it. ("Suddenly it all comes together" indeed!).
Anyway, I hope you and other members of our community will join us on our mission, and purchase the exciting new hLife boxed set. Only the boxed set comes with translucent cock rings!
Sincerely,
Harry Rodman
Vice-president
Homosexual Liaison Services
Apple Computer, Inc.