Go Back

I have a small miniITX machine that was originally used for digital sineage. I picked this machine up at the MIT Swap for $25 and for how cheap it was it contained a decent set of specs for how old it was. It contains a 2nd generation Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 64GB SSD, HDMI, and could run off of a DC power brick. But it lacked one thing.

Wifi

It didn't come with wifi and I wanted to put this computer in my bedroom, which lacks a ethernet drop. So wifi was needed.

The Hardware

I decided to go with the first available things I had that were free. I rummaged around my laptop bin for a old wifi card and found a Intel Centrino 1000 in a HP Elitebook. But then I realized, I didn't have a wifi card. So I dug up a ancient Linksys print server and gutted it for its antenna. Which leaves me with this.

Installing the wifi hardware was super easy, two screws removed then boom! inside the machine. Then it was as easy as installing the mini-PCIe card and makeshifting a way to mount the antenna. Then it was done!

And with that, We now have wifi, I'm installing Ubuntu Linux on this machine and it imediately picked up the Wifi card and is (currently as of writing) installing perfectly!