[X4U] 10.4.8 and the Snow ABS?

[Mary C. Youra]

My parents have a network consisting of a dsl modem, Snow Airport  
base station, Netgear Range Extender (which uses the one ethernet  
port on the ABS) to boost the signal to a room above the garage, my  
mom's  iMac G4 (that connects with an Airport card, and is close  
enough that it doesn't use the Range Extender's signal), and my dad's  
Dell pc with some kind of wifi card, which needs the Netgear Range  
Extender to connect. All has been working fine. I stopped by the  
house to answer my mother's query about Software Update's persistent  
messages. It turned out she was quite behind, and was still at  
10.4.7. I used Software Update to install 10.4.8. Instead of an easy  
restart, I had to shut down--I had failed to notice that my dad was  
logged in with fast user switching (this probaby has nothing to do  
with anything, but in case it does, I'm mentioning it), so I shut  
down, and then re-booted and repaired permissions. Everything seemed  
to go fine with that. Except, the Airport Base Station is dead to us.  
No matter what we've tried, we can't get it to be seen. We have tried  
several hard re-sets of the ABS to no avail--we did connect the iMac  
by ethernet to the ABS to reconfigure it afterward, and the lights  
seem to indicate that the ABS is actually resetting itself. We tried  
trashing three preference files (com.apple.internetconfig and the  
like, we'd found a list on Macfixit). We deleted all the networks  
listed as preferred networks, and re-listing them (something else  
suggested on Macfixit). We're using Airport Admin Utility and  
Internet Config. Neither find any trace of the ABS and its ID. We  
have connected the iMac directly to the dsl modem and finished  
updating it, so it now has the remaining Security Updates installed.

Does anyone have any ideas for something else we could try?

Is the answer a new and speedier (g) router?

Thanks,
Mary