Hacking a new antennae..

[svenviking]

I have an old Dell insipron 510m laptop. It has an IntelPROset 2100A MiniPCI 802.11b wifi card. The range is awful.

I opened it up, and saw that the minipci slot has 2 tiny wires going into them, with antenna-like gold-plated connectors, labelled MAIN and AUX.

As the reception isn't so good, being a first gen-ish wifi solution - I ask:

Can I hack/modify a new antennae to fit inside/outside the laaptop housing to get better range? Directional or Omnidirectional, it doesnt matter.

I'm also fairly sure I can increase the transmit power to get more range, though I'd like to explore the antennae path first.

I'd appreciate your thoughts,

Thanks,


Phil

[lincsat]

I've got the same in my lappy, I didn't fancy trying to connect to them so got a PCMCIA Wi-Fi card - range is much better, when I was holiday in the US, I had 3 open connections to choose from

[Annabell]

Hi svenviking

You may find a hardware mod wont work, much better "as Lincsat says" idea is to install a better card , i know a guy who keeps trying to mod GPUs , it dont work

[svenviking]

I'm a fan of improving what you already have vs replacing... when it gets too annoying I will get a new minipci card.. any recommendations?

[Annabell]

As a good friend of mine says

Mod it till it bleeds !!!

good luck

[dweeb4]

Hi Svenviking,

Funnily enough, I have just looked at the same issue. I have a inspiron 6000 with Intel 2200BG wifi mini-pci card - a good card but the signal I'm connecting to is weak & I was looking at increasing the aerial's sensitivity.

I too have main & aux aerial connections on this wifi card and I traced the two cables going up along the right of the LCD screen to two aerials - one on the right & one on the left of the centre latch.

I was thinking that one of these aerials can be unmounted & the cable desoldered from it. This cable could then be soldered to a connector somewhere on the inspiron case, for the attachment of an external aerial (there are some that attach to the corner of the screen)

[Annabell]

Hi

Just reading this reminded me of some quite clever stuff i saw and it may give you some ideas > DIY WiFi

[dweeb4]

Thanks Annabell,
I saw these DIY cantenna and that's what I intend to do on my desktop - it's no so practical/portable for a laptop and tends to be very directional so fixed site is better.

Any progress Svenviking?

[Bulldoguk1]

buy a netgear rangemax wpn511 i have one in my lappy superb range and speed

[dweeb4]

Yes Annabell,
The Cantenna was one of the solutions I had in mind but for a laptop it's not exactly portable and it's also a very directional antenna so would be more suited to fixed desktop type of use.

There are standard antennae which attatch on the corner of the screen that may well prove to be a more sensitive anenna than the internal antenna in a Dell laptop. Can't find the link to these now but when I do I'll post it.

Svenviking, how are u doing - did u get anywhere with this? At the moment I have one of the inspiron internal aerials hanging out of the screen - can't say there is any change in signal strength. Am looking for a suitable connector to put on the end