Apple 300M 11ABGN Airport Extreme on a Lenovo 3000N200

[mochooha]

http://cgi.ebay.de/APPLE-300M-11ABGN-AIRPO...Z370207730250QQ

 

There is the card. The laptop came with an Intel 3945ABG.

 

I did read several threads about replacing the Intel xxxx wireless card.

 

I assume the laptop has one antenna for the internal bluetooth, and two for the wireless. What kind of additional laptop antenna will I have to buy?

 

Ebay has many laptop wireless antennas with UF.L connectors. There are many types of UF.L. Will these antennas generally work on the Apple card listed above?

 

Thanks a lot. I'd hate to buy the card and waste the money. Way back when I tried iAtkos on this laptop, about two years ago, the ethernet did not work, and neither did the wireless. Getting the wireless working would be great, along with the audio, which I believe has better support now.

 

Edit: I bought the card. What about the antennas?

[SticMAC™]

It's the best you can get!!

 

SticMAC

[mochooha]

So... It was easily to physically install the radio, then I went looking for the drivers for XP. I don't have time to do a complete new OSX install at the moment. It's my wife's laptop. Problems with the connection with the Apple and Dell drivers.

 

Apple has drivers which only work in the FCC zone, 1-11. These from the bootcamp 2.0 XP drivers, version 4.100.x.x

 

We use 1-13 in Europe, and the Japanese region uses 14 also. It seems Broadcom's binaries only support the FCC region, or european region, or japanese region, but not the other, so the drivers must be changed if moving between zones. There is a Location drop-down, but it only has one choice, depending on the driver loaded.

 

I found Dell software on Dell's support site for a Dell 1500 wireless Draft-N card which was compatible. This was newer and would have WLAN configuration software to tell me more about the connection.

 

The newest Dell software I found so far is R202477. The driver version in the JPN (Japan) sub-folder is 03/21/2008, 4.170.77.3. I tried this driver after Apple's.

 

At first, I only installed the driver, and used XP's Zero-configuration service.

 

 

Then I realized if I deleted everything in the first third section of the SETUP.INI, the Dell software would install (otherwise it kicked back a 'not for your platform' error).

 

Same problem

Floating signal, cuts out, disconnects, reconnects. Where-as the Intel 3945ABG was solid, except periodically it would just 'turn off', and this is a known problem with this card and some AP's.

 

No WLAN encryption is used. We use an SSH tunnel (putty & OpenSSH) instead.

 

The laptop in question is normally in the back room. On the front balcony, we have a WHR-HP-G54 with 1.5-meter extensions with bases, dual antennas (broadcom chipset, Buffalo product, modified to add the second antenna), one 9db omni up and one 9db omni down. From the back room where my wife usually sits, the signal in the Dell software using the 'Apple/Dell 1500' reads 25db to the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 AP, and it's past the 50% signal strength into the 'green' zone. This is on channel 13. It has a some months old copy of a recent DD-WRT firmware, build SVN11805. Rock solid AP.

 

We also have a Fritzbox 7050 in the back to expand high-bandwidth coverage to the kitchen and back room. Firmware 14.04.50-10009, with a 7.5db omni on a 1-meter extension, in a base, on the window-ledge planter-box, casting a signal into the courtyard. The Fritzbox has a TI radio, and a small U.FL to RP-SMA pigtail replaces the built-in 2db antenna. The Fritzbox 7050 is maybe a five-year old model, AVM's first all-in-one box with WLAN. The box provides telephone service (VOIP) on it's WAN side, and on the LAN side bridges the LAN adapter with the WLAN, extending the WLAN cloud using channel 1. Same SSID as the Buffalo. It is linked via the LAN port to the WHR-HP-G54 in the front.

 

This creates a fully-covering WLAN cloud, with the buffalo covering the street on 13 and the fritzbox covering the courtyard on 1. WLAN radios moving between these roams properly.

 

Although the Dell software shows a 29db signal strength from the Fritzbox, and the Fritzbox antenna is directly outside the window of the back room - a clearly stronger graph than the Buffalo - I cannot for the life of me get the laptop to connect to the Fritzbox with the Apple/Dell 1500 Draft-N radio. With the OEM Intel 3945ABG it works fine, roaming works, except for the occasional known 'shut off' bug.

 

Both these AP radios are B/G.

Both are setup with defaults, and no afterburner or any other proprietary tweaks.

 

Roaming and connections also work fine with the Atheros AR5005x Mini PCI card in my 4-year-old Sager D500P (the radio is not the original) I am writing this message on now,

 

with an Atheros 3com X-Jack B/G/A PCMCIA card,

 

with the original Lenovo's Intel 3945ABG,

 

and any other radio device I may have tested, there is no problem with roaming, and no problem with disconnects. The signal is so good a neighbor on the 1st floor five apartments over, stone and brick, shares the courtyard with the house we are in, and gets a good signal with his laptop in his apartment, front back or inbetween. The Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 may be 'old', but it is solid so Buffalo still sells it!

 

I have toggled all the settings I can conceive of affecting the connection on the Apple/Dell Lenovo client. Same results.

 

I put the Intel 3945ABG back in for the time, until I can get more information on the Dell 1500 radio.

 

What do you know?

[mochooha]

VEN_14E4&DEV_4328

 

I can say unequivically, this card is junk.

 

Won't talk, and won't talk consistently, depending on the configuration, to either Buffalo WHR-HP-G54's (also, ironically, broadcom chipsets).

 

I have a standard Atheros AR50xx Minipci card in my older Sager D500P laptop (P4).

 

And an Intel 3945ABG mpci express from the Lenovo. Both WLAN cards work great, and many others, with the default settings for the routers. Both routers run DD-WRT, a recent build. Both clients get ping times of 1 to 3 ms, and no timeouts. The rare 30+ ms ping time.

 

I have tried several other wireless clients without problems, zydas, realtek.

 

This junk ping time-outs, gets anywhere from 3ms to hundreds of ms ping time.

 

This card is absolute junk.

 

Latest drivers, 2008 03 21 v4.170.77.3 I could find. Older drivers exhibit the same problem.

 

And yes, I understand every one of the advanced settings.

 

I cannot imagine wasting time trying to get this card to work in a Mac or OSX machine when it works in XP so poorly.

[mochooha]

For anyone reading this thread who is looking for a card,

 

I would use the Atheros-based 5008xx pci e cards instead!