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How To: Build your own "Real" Airport Card

alpha90 said:
Denailin said:
I have purchased and made my own airport card but it isn't as good as my Macbook Pro.

On my Macbook Pro I can get 10-12 megabits download on speedtest
On my Hackintosh I regularly get 3-7 download on speedtest

The 2 computers are less than 20 feet away from the router.

I plan on setting up ethernet, but until then, why the big drop?
Click to expand...

My tests show it's primarily due to the antenna. Actual Macintosh models have a perfectly tuned internal antenna.
The antennas that ship with home-brew wi-fi PCIe 1x adapter cards are not the perfect length.
To compensate for this you can do 2 things:
1) point the CustoMac antennas & the router antenna(s) in varying ways until you see a signal boost
2) install a 3rd party antenna on the wifi adapter which has more gain. My signature shows what I am presently using from Rosewill, but I may also try these much higher gain models:

$5 = http://www.amazon.com/10-dBi-2-4GHz-WIFI-Antenna/dp/B000SEQGT2/
$40 = http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Wireless-Antenna-Booster-Bluetooth/dp/B0054MLMLA/

For you, if you'll be getting cabled ethernet, you can just be patient. Still your having even weak signaled wifi on your CustoMac will be useful later because it allows you to see the wifi portion of your LAN while in wifi. I find this helpful for troubleshooting.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input, I might as well just get the $5 ones, it doesn't hurt to try.
 
@alpha90,

Thanks for your advice, yes i already got the BCM94311, i took it off my iMac when upgrading it to a N from a G wireless card, brought the PCIe 1X wifi card adapter, put it together today and it work straight away, now i can free my Airport Express base station for streaming.

Thanks again
 
jvincent08 said:
Can someone tell me if this card would work? http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Original-Ap ... 4163ab46f7 It says its from a G4 so maybe its too old or otherwise incompatible with my system (64-bit 10.7)? Or will I need this much more expensive option from a Mac Pro: http://www.ebay.com/itm/APPLE-Airport-E ... 3a6b99f056

Edit: Just found this guy: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0844088289 That should work out of the box right?
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Yes, the last one is your best bet, *usually* works OOB.
The first one is NOT a PCIe mini card, so it would not fit in PCIe 1x adapter-antenna.
 
I built a dual boot Lion and Windows 7 system using Multibeast and I built my own wireless card using these instructions.

Everything was working great until a few days ago. My wireless is suddenly really slow on both Lion and Win7 boots. If I use a cable directly to the router, it is fine and my other computers have no problems either so I don't think it is the router. I have reset the router and that hasn't helped. I even brought it into work with me and it is slow on the network there as well.

I also went back into my bios and checked to make sure nothing has changed. Everything was set as it should be so I am at a loss. How can it all of a sudden slow down so much?
 
Build 1
P8P67 LE |  i5 2500K |  GeForce Other
hockeyman96 said:
I built a dual boot Lion and Windows 7 system using Multibeast and I built my own wireless card using these instructions.

Everything was working great until a few days ago. My wireless is suddenly really slow on both Lion and Win7 boots. If I use a cable directly to the router, it is fine and my other computers have no problems either so I don't think it is the router. I have reset the router and that hasn't helped. I even brought it into work with me and it is slow on the network there as well.

I also went back into my bios and checked to make sure nothing has changed. Everything was set as it should be so I am at a loss. How can it all of a sudden slow down so much?
Click to expand...

suggestions:
-remove & re-seat 1x adapter
-try different 1x slot if you have one
-check internal antenna leads to card to assure they haven't popped loose from their tiny attachment points
-check external antennas for screw fastening
-presumably by now due to you testing at 2 locations you've tried aiming antenna differently towards the router - access point
 
So I went ahead and bought that BCM94322MC and an adapter. Booted up and everything was recognized instantly and started working right away. However, it's constantly dropping out after 10 minutes or so of use. The wi-fi status switches to off, and clicking the "turn wi-fi on" button doesn't do anything. Rebooting is the only thing that gets it going again. Is this a software thing or a hardware thing?
 
jvincent08 said:
So I went ahead and bought that BCM94322MC and an adapter. Booted up and everything was recognized instantly and started working right away. However, it's constantly dropping out after 10 minutes or so of use. The wi-fi status switches to off, and clicking the "turn wi-fi on" button doesn't do anything. Rebooting is the only thing that gets it going again. Is this a software thing or a hardware thing?
Click to expand...

I've seen the signal degrading, but I've never heard of AirPort actually switching to Off from On.
Which OS?
What size PSU?
 
alpha90 said:
I've seen the signal degrading, but I've never heard of AirPort actually switching to Off from On.
Which OS?
What size PSU?
Click to expand...
10.7.3, and 700W. Since my last post I've just let it sit idle or just refreshing this page now and then and it's still connected. It was shutting down in the middle of downloads earlier, so maybe the amount of usage is relevant. I haven't tested it in Windows yet, that'll be next.

Update: Moved the card from the x1 slot to an x16 slot. I don't know if it was the slot itself or the fact that it was directly above my GPU, but all is well now. Not as fast as it should be, but that just sounds like the antenna/reception issue everyone else has too.
 
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