I wanted to check out my new Olympus C-2020 digital camera, so I thought I'd take some pictures of my disassembled AirPort wireless network hub before I put it back together.

AirPort is *very* cool, and is bound to change home networking. Contrary to what most people think, it is *not* just for Apple computers. My PowerBook G3 is now wireless, but so is my wife's Dell Latitude, running Windoze NT.

If you're one of those poor saps who already dragged CAT5 cable all over your house (or under it), you have my condolences. :-)

The Lucent WaveLAN Silver cards can be purchased over the web for a mere $166 (plus shipping and handling) from http://www.brumleynet.com/, and they work in just about any machine with a PC-Card slot. Drivers for MacOS, Windows, and even Linux can be downloaded from the WaveLAN web site at http://www.wavelan.com/support/software/.

The AirPort hub is a simple embedded PC with a PC-Card slot, an ethernet port, a 56K modem, and a cool UFO-like plastic housing. Apple stuffs an off-the-shelf WaveLAN Silver card into the PC-Card slot. It's amazing that they sell this whole thing for only $299 considering that the WaveLAN cards by themselves sell (mail-order) for $166.

As usual, I'm short on time, so I'll let the above links and the following pictures speak for themselves. Click on any picture to see a larger image. If you have any questions, send me an email.

Back View	Top View	Bottom View
Inside, everything still connected	Inside with guts removed	"The guts" with WaveLAN card
Bottom of main board & modem	Top of main board

©2000-2001 Steve Lemke (steve@lemkeville.org)