I have been given a MacBook Pro unibody 17 inch (2,8 GHz Core 2 duo), OS 10.6 (hence 64 bit). Something is broken in the logic board (the machine had a fall, resulting in a cracked screen, which I exchanged for another one, from a totally fried computer), resulting in two problems. One is that the system has trouble booting, only one in about 7 boots will work, the others will lock up (HD tests OK). But once the machine is up and running, it will run for weeks without a glitch, it will also suspend and resume, so this booting-thing is not that big a thing. BUT the airport card does not work (does not turn on, it is recognized as installed however). I have tried exchanging the AirPort card and the cable, and tried re-installing OS X, but this doesn't change anything, and there is no visible damage to the cable socket on the logic-board. All this to tell you: Don't waste too much energy in trying to help me to repair the AirPort card, it will almost certainly involve changing the logic-board, which is FAR too expensive.
It should be possibly to circumvent this quite easily by using a usb-wifi dongle, attached to the screen back with velcro, or to use an express card wifi-card (I dont need that port for anything else). But having read a bit here and there, no dongle or express-card presents itself as the obvious choice - mac support is only in the "it may work, for a while" category. Any suggestions?
So far the machine runs with an ethernet-cable, so I can use it, it is a wonderful machine worth $3500 which I got for free. It would be nice to be able to spend $50 or so to make it truly portable again, instead of $1500 for a new (refurbished) logic board!
It should be possibly to circumvent this quite easily by using a usb-wifi dongle, attached to the screen back with velcro, or to use an express card wifi-card (I dont need that port for anything else). But having read a bit here and there, no dongle or express-card presents itself as the obvious choice - mac support is only in the "it may work, for a while" category. Any suggestions?
So far the machine runs with an ethernet-cable, so I can use it, it is a wonderful machine worth $3500 which I got for free. It would be nice to be able to spend $50 or so to make it truly portable again, instead of $1500 for a new (refurbished) logic board!
