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Clear Airport Base Station |
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Written by Jacob Thomason
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Thursday, 03 June 2004 |
In order to add a new look and just expirament Mark Welker posted this mod here. When the silver color of your airport base station gets old, or you want to add some new effects, such as LEDs, this guide comes in pretty handy.
Clear Airport Base Station
The final product
I know that the clear airport basestation hack has nearly been done to death but I purchased this APBS off eBay for the low low low price of $40. How I lucked into such a find is beyond me but since at the time I was hopeing/planning to help write a hardware hacking book I picked this up as a cheap substitue for an iBook (theres another clear mod for those that isn't as beaten to death). Right price, right time simple mod. And even if that fails I'd get a Orinoco WiFi card for nothing.
Stock is soooooooo boring...
About a week later (sue me, it was a paypal echeck) the APBS arrived in completly stock, down to the shrink wrap plastic over the APBS itself. It may have been used but only barely. For $40 it really was an amazing deal. Anways I took it down to the lab immediatly for hacking.
The bottom removed
The only big problem, being pointed out
Is it wrong to like taking stuff apart?
Really it isn't hard to open up. Remove three screws on the bottom, a few more on the electronics and the only trick one is the on the metal frame with the ports. Once all of those are removed it simply lifts up and out.
Bathtime
It took me a couple trys to strip away the paint, first with mineral spirits, that didn't work. Then a second attempt with 70% alcohol, the same type you can get at any drug store. Everything with paint was placed in a tupperware container then I pored in a couple bottles of Alcohol. Then I steped away and let it be for about 24 hours But I don't think Tupperware was designed for hacking UFO shpaed Apple electronics because...
It didn't let me cover everything
With about 70% of the paint removed I still had to finsih it off, but this time was a little impacient. I still let it sit but came back every hour or so and helped it along with some qtips
Back into the bath
But not for long
The second time around didn't take too long and as soon as it was I dried everything off and reassembled it, not that I was going to use it alot.
Reassembled
The bottom, with its info reattached with some scotch tape
Currently the WiFi card is serving duty with my 5300cs, but
at some point I'm going to get another card and finish etherneting my house.
Once thats done I'm going to reinstall its card and use it as a secondary basestation
for my house (The Netgear WiFi router I have now covers most of the house, but
at the opposite side reception is flaky at best.) As for the hack I may consider
adding paint or some lights, but it remains to be seen.
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