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I have been looking for a way to add an antenna to a WPC54GS for a while now. I got it cheap (£3!) and it has a well supported Broadcom chipset. I have had good results with it under Backtrack 3, even if the TX power is only 15mW.

Here is a high res pic of the board: http://www.bagpipes.net/files/front-linksys54g.jpg

Sorry for being a n00b but where do I need to solder on to? I found an old thread (http://www.netstumbler.org/f9/wpc54g-version2-external-antenna-w-tnc-jack-14698/) which says connect the pin to the end of C155 (top left corner of the image) but checking with a multimeter this appears to be connected to the GND points nearby. Maybe my multimeter isn't good enough to spot the very low value capacitor in between? In that case presumably I should just solder shield to one of these ground points...

mojo-chan wrote:I have been looking for a way to add an antenna to a WPC54GS for a while now. I got it cheap (£3!) and it has a well supported Broadcom chipset. I have had good results with it under Backtrack 3, even if the TX power is only 15mW.

Here is a high res pic of the board: http://www.bagpipes.net/files/front-linksys54g.jpg

Sorry for being a n00b but where do I need to solder on to? I found an old thread (http://www.netstumbler.org/f9/wpc54g-version2-external-antenna-w-tnc-jack-14698/) which says connect the pin to the end of C155 (top left corner of the image) but checking with a multimeter this appears to be connected to the GND points nearby. Maybe my multimeter isn't good enough to spot the very low value capacitor in between? In that case presumably I should just solder shield to one of these ground points...

Which side of the Cap did you measure from. It would appear onside of the Cap is connected to ground and the other is connected to the antenna.

Both sides appear connected with my DMM, but it wasn't an expensive one...

Attach it past C155, all the way out to the point marked "U2".

And for what it is worth, the Broadcom chip is NOT supported. It's one of the chipsets that falls into the "mostly works under NDIS" area.

Okay, thanks a lot Thorn. What about the shield, just do that to GND?

You are right about Broadcom support, although it does work very well with other tools like AirCrack.

mojo-chan wrote:Okay, thanks a lot Thorn. What about the shield, just do that to GND?

Yes, shield to GND.

Thanks, I'll report back when I have given it a go!

Have worked the external antenna?