Curtis, if you buy a new airport/bluethoot card and you install it my advice would be to test the card before closing the iBook top case. You don't want to reopen the case if the card doesn't work don't you ?

To do it you need an external usb keyboard and mouse. So install the card then connect the external keyboard and the mouse.

Connect the top case power switch connector in his socket (at the upper left of the iBook logic board, the blue and white cable) then plug the AC adapter to the iBook. Push the power button, the iBook should boot and once it's booted check if the card is seen by the computer in the Apple menu "About this Mac..". If so open iTunes and play songs with animations on full screen for half an hour or play a movie (we need an intensive job done to heat the iBook heatsink). If the card is still seen by the computer and there were no freeze or kernel panicks during the itunes animations playback then the card and the card socket should be OK. You can reassemble the machine. If the same problem occurs with the new card then you have the AP slot failure so take off the card and use a wireless USB dongle.