Original Airport Card Disconnect 10.4.3

This problem has resolved, but I don't understand how? This iBook sits by my bedside and rarely moves. The connection is always 100% and other wireless computers in the house were fine, many further away. Nothing has changed in several years except the OS updates, and the fact that this specific card did this once before. Yes, it was removed and reseated many time in troubleshooting. Nothing helped. I finally began using a Belkin USB wireless adapter instead. After many hours use with the Belkin, all of a sudden the bars for the Airport reappeared as if by magic. This wasn't rebooted, or changed in any way, other than the orignal battery was now back in place.
Since the Airport port is above the Belkin port in the Network System Preferences>Network Port Configurations in the Automatic location, I assumed this priority to Airport meant it was working. The strange thing is that I leave this laptop playing streaming internet radio 24 hours a day, and when I began, the Belkin was the only working connection, and when I returned, the stream was playing still, and the Airport was now the working connection. I know this because I unplugged the Belkin expecting the stream to stop cold, but it just continued. Wow, strange issue. As I said, I'm experienced with Network settings and issues. I'm guessing that its related to the battery switch and the PMU somehow, but don't ask me how.

Well, it's unresolved again. When it's working, it's fine. Full 100% bars, no disconnect. When it's bad, nothing.

In the System log at Startup I see:

Nov 28 23:22:03 localhost kernel[0]: AirPortFirmware: start Sta f/w download

What's this? This problem is definitely software, so perhaps the "f/w download" which I'm interpreting as "firmware download" is corrupted and screwing up my card function?

Also, in troubleshooting this I see other people have mentioned a problem when they try to stream audio out using iTunes. My problem began immediately after I started using iTunes to play live MP3 streams from a local radio station. Perhaps iTunes has caused this Airport issue?

In the windowserver.log I see this, looks unrelated to me:

Nov 29 01:58:29 [100] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXSetWindowListTags: Operation on a window 0x5 not owned by caller iTunes
Nov 29 01:58:29 [100] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXOrderWindow: Operation on a window 0x5 not owned by caller iTunes

This saga gets stranger and stranger. Yes, I've re-seated the card many times, that's not the problem. The original "base station" was a D-Link DI-504 802.11b router that'd been used flawlessly for a couple years. In reading that some of the latest updates addressed issues with 3rd party "base stations", I decided to change routers to see if that would help. I had a D-Link DI-614 802.11g wireless router and I switched to that. It did not help. The Airport menubar icon was dimmed and shown no network to connect to.

I'd read on another posting in this forum about using the Airport Card drivers for the program KisMAC. I downloaded KisMAC and used the "passive" Airport Card driver and it was able to see all four networks near my location. Mine was full-strength, the others very weak. Mine was on a clear channel far away from any interference from the other networks. When I loaded the "active" Airport Card driver from KisMac, and then highlighted my network and selected "Join", to my surprise the bars in the Airport Icon immediately went full strength black and my card was working. When I quit KisMAC the icon dimmed and shown no network to connect to. Obviously this is either a bizarre, flakey hardware issue; or more likely something related to one of the recent software updates. I don't know why the KisMAC driver can fix my card, but it seems to work. I've seen the Airport then spontaneously disappear for no reason whatsoever, and then reappear also. KisMAC seems to force it to connect, but can't stop a disconnect. I don't know if KisMAC is actually a real driver. Terminal>kextstat shows only "com.apple.driver.AppleAirPort (3.4.4)" loaded for Airport, so I'm not exactly certain what KisMAC is doing to enable my card. It only worked when I was using the 802.11g router, not the 802.11b which I'd used for years. This makes me wonder about whether the Airport card or motherboard just dying?

I "think" I have solved my issue. It appears to be caused by the Airport Update 2005-001 which I mistakenly installed. Here is what I wrote for MacOSXHints forums:

I have two iBooks that both developed this issue soon after the 10.4.3 Update and the Airport Update 2005-001. In troubleshooting I tried many things. First, the two iBooks are a clamshell 366 SE and a dual USB 500, both with Airport cards with 9.52 firmware. I'd been using both with a D-Link DI-514 802.11b router for several years without any issues. I also have used them regularly with an Airport Extreme Dual Ethernet version. When these disconnect issues began, I switched to a D-Link DI-524 802.11g and the results were identical with all three, so I don't believe the "base station" has anything to do with this issue, and doubt that reinstalling base station firmware will fix it.

I had used Software Update and got the smaller iBook specific updates, so I downloaded the 10.4.3 Combo update and installed it on both, and there was no change.

This led me to zero in on the Airport Update 2005-001. I decided to attempt to uninstall this update, especially after I realized I had installed it against the instructions in the Read Me, which stated an "Airport Extreme Card" was "required" for this software. I was almost certain this was this issue. I used OSXPM (OS X Package Manager) to "uninstall" the package. It uses the receipt in the HD>Library>Receipts folder to get a manifest to uninstall everything. OSXPM is available as freeware here:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14368

I actually downloaded the Airport Update 2005-001 again and opened it with Pacifist just to check and see that "everything" was uninstalled by OSXPM, and it appeared that "everything" was uninstalled correctly. Since Pacifist was open I Updated Prebinding (same as optimizing) and then rebooted by using Cmd-Opt-P-R to clear the PRAM and then Cmd-Opt-O-F followed by:
set-defaults<Return>
reset-all<Return>
to reset the NVRAM just in case it was configured wrong by the software I'd just removed. I suppose I might have used Onyx or Cocktail or similar to clear caches and optimize, but I didn't.

On restart it booted into OS 9.2 and I tried out Airport 2.04 in 9.2 and the results were not promising at all. The signal started full strength and then stopped dead every few seconds when I was within 5 feet of the router. Unfortunately I've never used either of these iBooks with Airport in 9.2 so I don't know if this is new, or if perhaps it never worked better in 9.2?
I switched to 10.4.3 and the network is shown at full strength and seems stable for now. It's been about 4-5 hours, which is longer than since this issue began. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping it's solved for good?

I'm going to call this issue resolved. I've been over 24 hours without any connection issues, and before it would drop out within an hour always. The solution was to uninstall the Airport Update 2005-001 which was only meant to be used with Airport Extreme cards and not regular Airport. Once uninstalled the connection is fine.

I solved this myself. If it helps you, give me the points I can't award myself. It was solved by uninstalling the Airport Update 2005-001 which was meant only for Airport Extreme cards and not for normal Airport cards (see the Read Me). I used OSXPM (OS X Package Manager) to uninstall the update and everything was fine. I later booted a backup HD and the problem came back, and then disappeared when I uninstalled the update from the backup HD also. Problem solved.