Punting Puters'

I know it's a little immature, but about an hour ago, I about broke my toe kicking a PC. I am on about my fourth or fifth computer trying to make a PC for my son that works. The poor boy asked me for Linux. He liked the fact that he could have an operating system that is *not* Windows. How could I say no? Why have I waited so long to give him something other than windows? What kind of father am I? So I have been trying since Friday to pull together parts from my various scrap piles that will work. I need to dispose of some of this buggy old hardware.

This is actually my first project of the weekend. My second was to add an external Cantenna connector to Audrey (my iBook). I thought I had better first find a BNC connector to use. I am all out of old network cards. I have gone through several of them salvaging the tough BNC mounts off of them. Then I came across something I used to carry around in my bag called an Ether-Pocket. This little device hooked to your parallel port to provide basic SLOW network connectivity. It had a RJ-45 connector AND a BNC. So there was my part. Trouble was, I liked it a little too much. I also found that it would be hard to mount the BNC connector to my iBook sideways, and still allow a BNC connector to attach to it. So I decided to mount the whole damn thing to my iBook, and run a wire to the inside.

It took about 6 screws to take the iBook screen apart. As I suspected, inside the plastic covering were little dangling antenna thingies on either side of the iBook display. One was labeled "MAIN" and the other was labeled "AUX" (Auxilary). I thought attaching to main was my best bet. Doesn't look like it mattered, they both went to the same place.



I ran a cable straight from the "MAIN" on down to a hole I drilled near the bottom of the screen. It was easy running the cable inside of my Ether-Pocket thing and soldering it down. For my next trick, I will take it on a war drive with a cantenna and see if my mod did any good. I certainly hope so. This project was a pain in the ass!

By the way, if you have been calling my house asking for Doddie, the bitch doesn't live here. Stop bothering me when I am trying to drink!