Three off-topic techy questions

[Fusion]

1) My friend bought an Asus notebook some time ago and when he saw my cheap old T23 with an S-video out, he was pretty mad
Question is: is it possible to add and S-video out to notebooks that don't have them?

2) Is it possible to somehow strenghten the signal on a USB Wifi dongle?
I've seen rkawami's awesome tutorial on how to add an antenna to a Thinkpad with an internal wifi card, so I'm looking for a similiar tut, but with the USB dongles.

3) I found this interesting PCMCIA CardBus TV/DVB card from LifeView, which sells locally at around 60USD.
Is it worth the money and does anyone have experience with it?
Link: http://www.lifeview.com.tw/html/product ... ardbus.htm
It has a fair amount of equipment, the price above includes the remote control.

[doppelfish]

2) Is it possible to somehow strenghten the signal on a USB Wifi dongle? [snip]

Depends on the dongle. Somw PCCards (like my trusty old Lucent Orinoco silver card) have a connector for an external antenna. This USB-dongle, for one, has a connector, too.
If you feel crafty, the self contained usb cantenna should be your next project. Do let us know how it's going!

cheers,
-- fish

[tom lightbody]

2) Is it possible to somehow strenghten the signal on a
USB Wifi dongle?

onboard dn here in NZ, we find a 5m extension permits
useful elevation of the USB wifi dongle: spinnaker
halyard:-) Or you can uphaul to a nearby tree. PCMCIA
is unfavoured by us.

[Fusion]

Thanks for the links doppelfish.
I also founs this interesting page, too bad I don't understand italian: www.wifimodding.com
So I took the dongle apart, it's an Edimax EW7317UG almost the same as the one they used.
http://www.wirelessmodding.it/index.php ... mitstart=4
Could someone please try to identify where I should be connecting the wire on mine?

img]http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2695 ... ig8.th.jpg[/img]

[GomJabbar]

Regarding question 1.

Sometimes it is possible to add TV-Out internally, but this is probably not the norm. I added TV-Out to a ThinkPad 600E that did not come with TV-Out. In this case, IBM sold some model 600's with TV-Out and some without. I just had to buy the adapter card that was used by the TV-Out models, and add it to my 600E. It is true that TV-out in the 600E was not S-Video, but composite video. My T42 comes with S-Video, however I use an S-Video to composite video adapter with it. Note that any VGA to S-Video adapter will not display a quality picture (from what I have read).

See following solutions from AVerMedia:

http://aver.com/ppd/quickplay_spec.html $79.99

http://aver.com/ppd/averkeyimicro_spec.html $99.99

http://aver.com/ppd/averkey300gold_spec.html $179.99

http://aver.com/ppd/averkey550_spec.html $299.99

Here is a not very portable solution, but might be useful in some situations.
Pinnacle Systems ShowCenter 200 - $299.99

[Fusion]

Thanks for the links GomJabbar, interesting stuff.
I'll have a look through those products.

[Fusion]

Awesome, I just found a hack for my Asus WL-167G http://www.oberkommando.org/asus_wl-167g/
Nice tutorial, maybe someone will find that handy.

[Rick Aguinaldo]

1) is it possible to add and S-video out to notebooks that don't have them?

I do not have a Margi DVD-to-go pcmcia card but a cursory look on the ones offered in ebay with the dongle say that it has S-video, video, left and right audio ports.