Any way to rig up a Centrino antenna?

I

InorganicMatter

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I have an old IBM P3 laptop that I want to make wireless. I purchased an Intel 2200BG internal card and installed it in the internal miniPCI slot. Installed the drivers and it works great. Great that is, when it is six inches away from the Access Point. If I go any more than a few feet from the AP, I lose the signal altogether. There were no leads to hook up an antenna to the miniPCI card, so I'm thinking this is the problem. Is there any way to rig up an antenna, or is this something that must be on the laptop the begin with?

EDIT - Found this. How does one install it? Surely the laptop must support it, correct?
 
Internal cards use internal antennas. You might be able to hack a real ugly solution together, but I'd just get a wireless PC card.
 
it should have an iternal antenna... and there is NO way that the signal should be that low, that a few 'feet' cuts it out altogether.

QJ
 
make sure you access point isn't surrounded by a wall of lead :D
but seriously you could have metal around the access point to block the signal
 
If you have no internal connector on the mini pci card that sounds about right. No antenna means practically no coverage. The mini should have two connector leads. You'd just attach one end of the antenna you linked to those, and snake the rest of the antenna somewhere within your laptop shell. typically they will snake along the sides of the shell. some go up into the LCD lid.
 
few t23 models had internal antennas, no t21 or t22 models had antennas.

you will have to get creative and fish the anteanna inside of your laptop... which isn't trivial.
 
This is an IBM thinkpad A22m. So no internal antenna.

So let me get this straight, I could buy the antennas above and they would work? I would connect one end of the antenna to the card (obviously) and the other end would be attached to my chassis somewhere?
 
If you get those antennas you just have to route them in the notebook somewhere and try to reduce interference. On the Thinkpads that ship with antennas they run them on each side of the LCD. That's one reason you get really good reception..they are up high and you have dual antennas.
 
I agree, you will have to fish the antenna around inside your laptop anywhere it will fit. I'm not suprised at all that the wireless doesn't work unless your laptop is practically touching your access point.
 
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