Is my (Apple) Airport fried?

September 29, 2004 9:00 AM

Is my (Apple) Airport fried? [more]

There was a thunderstorm, which may or may not have anything to do with it. (A couple halogen bulbs in the house did burn out during the storm, too, though.) But the next day, the Airport (one of the first model ones, not the Extreme or anything) was completely dead -- plug it in, and nothing happens, no lights come on or anything. There was a surge protector on the line, but an old one and I'm not sure I trust it (the light is still on, though, somehow, supposedly indicating it hasn't felt a spike). Other devices on the same power cord are fine.

Is it dead? Is it maybe just the power adaptor for the Airport? If so, could that be replaced without replacing the whole thing? Is there anything to do besides just buy a new one?

posted by mattpfeff to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Bring it to your local Apple store and see what the geniuses say in terms of repair costs.

If they can't fix it, or if a fix is expensive, buy a third party wireless router. If you don't use AppleTalk (i.e. no exclusively OS 9 machines, no old Apple-branded printers) you don't *need* Apple's hardware doing your routing. You can get a NetGear or Linksys wireless router for between $20 and $50 that can be administered from a Mac in a web browser.

I'm an Apple diehard but I don't see any reason to buy an Apple base station unless you need AppleTalk bridging or you want the portability/music streaming of the AirPort Express (which you might want -- it is a gorgeous little device).
posted by bcwinters at 9:30 AM on September 29, 2004

Presuming your Airport is one of the ones which used the extremely weak capacitors, you might try this kit.
posted by tomierna at 11:42 AM on September 29, 2004

Do you have AppleCare on any computer? IIRC, the coverage extends to one Airport card plus one Airport base station.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 12:01 PM on September 29, 2004

I had a wap, stereo, and radar detector destroyed by lightning that struke my yard. The wap and stereo were plugged into ACP UPSs, and the radar detector was out in my car, not plugged into anything. I theorize that they, all being things designed to receive electromagnetic waves, were destroyed by the EMF from the lightning. So even if your wap was plugged into a great surge protector, if my theory holds water, lightning can still kill it.
posted by duckstab at 12:16 PM on September 29, 2004

I don't see any reason to buy an Apple base station unless you need AppleTalk bridging or you want the portability/music streaming of the AirPort Express.

You don't need an Airport base station for streaming music to an Airport Express. Mine works great with an SMC wireless router.

If you want the Airport Express to work as a range extender, then yes, I believe your base station must be an Apple Airport.
posted by Monk at 3:02 PM on September 29, 2004

If you bring it to an Apple genius they won't even look at it unless you bring a computer with it. Moreover, I think it needs to be one with applecare, as noted by nakedcodemonkey. IIRC they don't care if it's your computer, or the one attached to the base station, etc. they just need to see a computer. When this happened to me I brought it with my dad's (then new) powerbook and they didn't give me any trouble.
posted by rorycberger at 4:11 PM on September 29, 2004

Oh, FWIW, my problem was that lights and stuff would turn on, but they were red and it wasn't sending out a signal. They told me it was dead and it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to fix it.
posted by rorycberger at 4:12 PM on September 29, 2004