Has anyone successfully made an internal wireless antenna?

[brainpicker]

I have a young lady who is upgrading her T23 and is interested in adding internal wireless, but her model is not the type containing the built-in antenna. She is not concerned with losing modem capability (because adding a wireless card means she will remove the mPCI modem) as she has a spare PCMCIA Card Modem she carries. Her concern is spending the $30-40 + another $10 shipping to obtain the "proper" antenna. My thinking is that with the proper size to assure back and forth of the 2.4GHz band it should not be too hard to make one of these with some shielded copper wire. Has anyone tried this with success, and if so what size did you make the wire (and where did you snake it in the base of the unit assuming you didn't do "screen surgery"). Any help is appreciated as I'd like to provide her with information that will work, and not just my "opinion".

Thanks,
Yak

[whizkid]

I strongly recommend AGAINST trying to make an antenna. WiFi antennas are not just a wire of the proper length. The ones I bought for installation in my 600X have strange-looking rectangular boxes at the end.

Antenna design is one of the last analog voodoo-based black arts in this increasingly digital world. Not many people are good at it. Good antennas get named for their inventors.

If she wants it to work, she should buy the right antennas. Even then, since the case was not designed to work with internal antennas, reception may not be as good as a good (or even fair) CardBus solution.

[slagmi]

Here you go

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dl ... fi+antenna

And yes, you have to open the screen-- after all, where else are you going to put it?

[Bob Collins]

The OP states he does not want to do screen surgery, so then he would go for installing the antenna in the base. The Powerbooks do that and it works. The one catch is that the Powerbooks have little antenna "windows", one on each side/end of keyboard to allow signal in and out.

Not a perfect solution, but will work, assumably not as well and with such range as a proper in-the-lcd-frame antenna. Also I think the screen antenna are such that the orientation os used to help with signal pickup.

I think those rectangular things on the real antenna is a mount piece to lock the antenna into the case as well as, perhaps, an area for the copper wire to loop back on itself, if it actually does loop back on itself.

Yes, length of copper is important, but how it is laid out in the case is probably more important for good reception and transmit.....

Interesting project, although I think the concensus here is that it will be a kludge of VERY limited range.....

[slagmi]

Bob, Powerbooks have a place for an antenna!

Where are you going to put it in a T23??

Remove the speakers and fold it up and put it there?

Make them into little rectancles and put them in the PC card Slots?

Wedge it up against the planar somewhere or under the palmrest and cut some of the casing away?

That was the point I was trying to make - there's nowhere else suitable.

[Bob Collins]

Slagmi, I agree, I don't know where you would put the antenna in the base of a T2x. I have opened my T22 once and it was darn tight in the base.

I was runnng with the theory, and assuming that if you could 'find' room in the base, you 'could' do it, but there would be other limitations once it was installed and operational.

I guess I had not made myself clear.

<crazy_talk>maybe he has found a way to fold the space-time-continuum and can thus make some 4th dimension space for the antenna</crazy_talk>

[Nolonemo]

There is room in the T22 for antennas under the keyboard and palm rest, I've done it. But a better solution is to get a 3Com xjack wifi card, IMO. The ability to grab signal is the same and you don't have to mess around with stuffing stuff into the T22.