Hello,
I recently got a Belkin F5D7011 802.11g PCMCIA card (Broadcom 4306 chipset), and I've found the built-in antennas to be really poor. I can barely stand 20 metres away from my AP before the signal conks out, and my AP has two extra-strength external antennas connected. My old wireless-B card works fine at a much farther distance anyway. So I've taken on the task of attaching an external antenna to this card, which doesn't have an SMA connector to accept an external antenna.
I have a 7dBi "High Gain Antenna" by Linksys with an SMA connector. Apparently Radio Shack in Canada (now Circuit City) doesn't supply the opposite SMA connector I need to plug this antenna in, so for now I'm making do without one and just connecting the antenna via copper-coated wires (my resources here are very limited). See a photo of the antenna and wires here:
Here is a photo of the top of the card:
Here is a photo of the bottom of the card, where I also had to cut out part of the circuit to the old antenna:
Does anyone here know why this modification has made no difference? I'm so inexperienced with modifying circuitry, so maybe someone more experienced here can see a problem with how I've done it.
I assume "signal level" is the reading I should be interested in, rather than "link quality" or "noise level", because "signal level" seems to be the only one that decreases with distance. The other two readings are always very good and stay about the same regardless of distance and obstacles.
Thanks in advance for any tips you can offer me.
Cheers, Paul