Forums | MacLife

You bought an actual Apple brand base station? Is it one of the original ones with the faulty capacitor? Probly not. It woulda crapped out months ago.

Anyhooz, sounds broken to me. You might take your laptop to an Apple Store or other open network to make sure IT isn't the problem.

is the base station next to something like a florescent light, TV, or moniter.

that might cause it

its been working fine for over a year now, no problems... its just decided to crap out all of a sudden... this is honestly the first problem i have ever had with it...

its the snow base station (dual ethernet), not the original graphite base station...

i have no apple store in my area to take it to... the nearest one is about a 3 and a half hour drive away (in atlanta)...  anywho...

i may try and take it to the local cafe' here in town... its wireless enabled, so i guess from that i will beable to tell if it is the card or the base station having the problem... thanks for the suggestions so far... please keep them coming!

Ok, I don't own an Airport base station and haven't seen one in months so I could be completely wrong, but doesn't the base station have an external power supply?  You said that you left it unplugged for a period of time and then your wireless network worked for a while after you plugged it back in.
<Possible scenario>
The power supply overheats and solder joint inside cracks.  You leave it unplugged long enough to cool back down and the solder crack closes (doesn't re-fuse back together).  You plug it back in and it works until the power supply heats up again and the crack reappears.
</Possible scenario>
So I guess the short answer is try swapping out the power supply (if possible).

~jlk

lights flash and everything... and i haven't gotten anything wireless in a while... i will try the crossover cable thing when i get home either at lunch or after work is done...

and sorry, i should've named it "my airport sucks"... i meant to, but was in a hurry as i was typing this at work...

keep the suggestions coming if ya got any!

what was the lest few things you changed to your home when it began to crap out? if you live in an apartment or other type of close-in housing, you might have a neighbor who just bought a 2.4ghz phone something along those lines. i would suggest downloading a program called kismac to see what else is around you as far as networks go. you can also use it to measure signal strength as you switch the base station to different channels to see if one of those works better. exercise some caution when using kismac though, it uses its own 802.11 drivers and has experimental drivers built in that could fry your hardware (if you turn the option on- they warn you of it too)

It's all them radio hobbyists in your area.  Chop down their Antennae.

Or something.

You may want to try elevating your base station too. I was having similar problems with mine until I set it up on top of a stand that raises it about a foot above my desk.

am i just going crazy?... or should i go door-to-door inspecting people's houses?

Antennea on the iBook's goes bad.  I know.  Mine did.  Make sure your iBook's reception hasn't pooped out before you blame the airport.