No airport card installed, fried logic board?

Okay, issue at hand is:

Completely no detection of Airport card. And I'm wondering if its due to a fried motherboard or conked cable. I flew in a new airport chip albeit a different model than the one pre-installed. Its past warranty and I don't have the extended warranty so I'm pretty fine with ripping and changing stuff, but not fine paying the service centre for something I believe I can solve on my own.

The network card isn't detected by the system.

Solutions attempted:

1. Reset PRAM

2. Reset SMC

3. Reset SMC and PRAM

4. Replaced airport chip

5. Installed new chip and installed OsX 10.6

6. Used old chip and installed OsX 10.6

7. Did an extended diagnistics with no errors.

Cause:

Probably because I walked into a wall, with my MBP taking a side blow, don't ask why I walked into a wall because I don't know either.

Another sideline question:

If I had to change the logic board, can I use one with a faster processor? I got the 2.66 model.

Thanks for pondering on my predicament if you got this far.