External Antenna

External Antenna Modification For SMC-2632 802.11b PCMCIA card.

Original post By Cpt. Kaboom & Brian Oblivion
With less than US$100 dollas we can get this (SMC-2632 802.11b PCMICIA) card. With a little patience, soldering skills and crafty x-acto knife handiwork, you can modifiy your card to accomodate any antenna you deem necessary to close that RF link, because the fact that the manufacturer left mounting holes in the PCB to accomodate a PCB mount SMA RF connector The maximum output power of this card is 50mW.

How to add an external antenna port to your ASUS wl-167g USB wlan adapter
First remove the plastic case:
There is No hidden screws, just only plastic click-on (3 times at each long side). The part with the LEDs and "ASUS" is the cover that snaps over the bottom. Just Cut the labels. Push and lift with a knife each "ASUS" side away from the bottom, starting from a corner e.g. from the holes for the neck lace.

Technical
There is a socket on the PCB which can be used with a pigtail, but those who have used this for stumbling, have often found they don't last very long.
Nevertheless this modification does allow the attachment of a standard 2dbi or 5dbi rubber ducky antenna, which many will have floating around the shed.
1. Remove plastic cover, notice the metal strip, this is the internal antenna.

2. First cut the pin leaving as much length as possible Then bend the metal strip back and forwards until the strip brakes off.

I was looking for a USB-connected WiFi-Adapter to keep the antenna-cable short. I chose the Linksys WUSB54G v4 because it is not too small to modify and uses a Ralink 2570 chip: there are GPLed drivers for Linux available.
This is the unmodified WUSB54G

Model no. WLI-U2-KG54-AI


PCB Detail
The Air Station g54 is a USB2 based Wi-Fi adaptor based on the Ralink rt2570 chipset.