Yet another laptop wifi antenna mod

Add range to your laptop's wifi card by installing a removable antenna which is connected to your internal wireless card via the PCMCIA card slot.

questions: [e-mail]

Step 1: Peices parts

You need:
An antenna, size matters
A short pigtail connector
A pigtail to RP-TNC connector (can be anything that matches your antenna)
A "blank" PCMCIA card, comes with most dell laptops to fill the PCMCIA slot
Epoxy
optional: copper wire (pulled out of some old Cat5)

Most of these peices came out of one of the many burned up Cisco Aironet 1200 routers I have sitting in my closet

Comments

[joinaqd]

wow that laptop of yurs is an antique! porbably from the 1900's you should sell it, you probably will get bout $5000- 10000 dollars from a crazy antique collector. LOL

[The nerdling]

i have an oldet one, no touch pad only the ball smaller screen aswell, 4gb hard drive replaced to 20gb replaced to 10gb
128mb ram, 2.5 mb video, 400mhz cpu, good cd drive no bluetooth or wifi runs xp slowly

[darkclaw42]

 Heh, its got the XP Sticker on it mate. ;) Pretty Modern.

[dla888]

IBM makes a good solid laptop. I've been eyeing an IBM for awhile, but have never had the money.

[yawgmoth1]

Ok for the obviously ignorant 3 people at the top, its not a phone antenna...its a router one. Also, thinkpads have ALWAYS looked like dinos...even the new ones still do, its just their style, its a work laptop, not one to play warcraft in your mothers basement with. And yes this works, I made a similar one just not utilizing the pci slot. Mine simply comes out of the top of my screen though its a different model. Nicely done!

[bowmaster]

OMG!!!! I did this and I could get a good signal off my wifi from 15 miles away!! You are a god!!! Lol, this is an awesome instructable. I throught it was real for the first 3 seconds.

[WIFIENGINEER]

Looks to be a 850mhz bag phone antenna

Don't think that would work too well at 2.4ghz LOL

[totoroben]

You could try to add an antennae to an external card because most laptops are not meant to be tampered with on the inside. This is why they have torx screws.

[Derin]

:P thats an ibm

[baneat]

Beefy lol

[johnboyd]

Sorry!The add got missing when you sign in. Regardless what makes the signal stronger using this method? I am very interested?

[johnboyd]

is this a joke? I am new to here,but why am i seeing an add?

[sysadmn]

Clever! If you have the laptop apart again, could you get a picture of the internal connection? Presumably you had to take apart the laptop to get to the antennas?

[mehri_hama]

Well DONE !!! great idea,

[Body4Change.com]

I've been reading a LOT of this WiFi stuff here on our extraordinary Instructables.com and was wondering if anyone has tested the strainer method against the coffee can or pringles method and also against using an old directv satellite and such. Which one would give me the best reception? I'm guessing the satellite dish but I am new to this. TIA!

[Possum Living]

Definitely the sat dish. I have an 8' sat dish I plan to try.

[cyberoidx]

WOW. Does this REALLY work? really, it looks a bit unbelieveable :P

[luke]

xD nice work questions tho do you leve this card in your laptop or do un plug it somehow and what kind of signal upgrade do you get when you doo this? luke

[Crash2108]

Already hackadayed...

[zus]

Great Sucess