Thread

Graphite Airport UFO

68kMLA Hardware 11 posts Mar 28, 2010 to Apr 4, 2010

#1 Sun, 28 Mar 2010 - 08:32 68kMLA

I have the original graphite Airport base and wondered if anyone has upgraded the internal card to anything better than an Orinoco Gold card? Is there anything that supports a faster wifi standard or tougher encryption? Do you need a 5v card to upgrade these? I've seen 5v wireless g cards and wondered if one of those could go in.

#2 Sun, 28 Mar 2010 - 08:39 68kMLA

I'm fairly certain that the only cards they support are cards based on the ORiNOCO/WaveLAN chipset. Any WiFi card will need a driver, and the ORiNOCO drivers are already built in, its impossible to replace them with a driver for any other card. Even if you were to find a 5V, 16 bit, non-CardBus card that somehow managed to work, it'd still be a lot more pain than simply buying a 802.11g WAP.

#3 Sun, 28 Mar 2010 - 14:26 68kMLA

16 bit, non-CardBus

That's your main obstacle. It's a PCMCIA (16 bit) slot, not a Cardbus (32 bit) slot.

#4 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 - 05:55 68kMLA

I can't believe it still works. Every Graphite Airport I've ever seen or had all died within the last 5 years. It had a lot of problems. Wouldn't get too attached to it.

#5 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 - 07:06 68kMLA

I have had two graphite APs. One I bought new in late 1999, died in about 2003; although the WaveLAN card was fine (I use it to this day in my PowerBooks.) The second I bought used in 2006-ish, and only turn on very occasionally. Works, though. (I was disappointed when Apple stopped allowing the "AirPort Utility for Graphite and Snow" to work.)

#6 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 - 15:08 68kMLA

There are two capacitors on the Graphite Airport PCB that are the culprit when it comes to those things dying. (If I recall they're near the power plug.) Replace them and you will almost certainly bring a dead one back to life. I've fixed three that way.

#7 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 - 15:33 68kMLA

When I was visiting in France, I came across two graphite AirPorts (two, IIRC) and both were dead. :'(

#8 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 - 20:04 68kMLA

Man, what is it with Apple products and crummy capacitors?

I've never encountered this on old IBM/IBM clone systems, with some of them being more than 20 years old.

#9 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 - 20:51 68kMLA

The capacitor failures in the gray Airports weren't really Apple's fault. The whole computer industry was badly bit by the problem. Any motherboard or power supply from that vintage is automatically suspect.

#10 Thu, 1 Apr 2010 - 00:52 68kMLA

Ah, thanks for that insight. The makes me think back to a system I saw from that era few years ago that just suddenly up and died. The motherboard showed it was getting power but the system showed absolutely no signs of life regardless of what one tried. I'd never come across one like that before, usually one sees at least a fan turn on, etc... I wonder if that's what happened to it...

#11 Sun, 4 Apr 2010 - 04:14 68kMLA

While the capacitors may well be a problem, both WaveLAN cards eventually died, well one died and one became notoriously unreliable. A friend's Snow WaveLAN also began showing similar symptoms, leading to it being replaced. All things considered, these units were bad mojo.