Airport Card no longer has acceptable range

Ever since the early days of OS 10.4, my airport card range became incapable of connecting more than about 6 feet whereas previously it was able to make a reliable connection 40 feet away through several interior walls. My router is a D-Link DI-624. The problem also exists with another router at a different location, thus I have concluded that it is my wireless card that is the problem and not the router.
Does this sound like a hardware problem or a software problem?
Is there a diagnostic procedure that I could use to determine the cause of the problem and how to fix it?
G4 1.25 PowerBook running OS 10.5.5,
Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x4E),
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (4.170.25.8)

The only real way to test is to swap out the card with a known good one. If everything is fine with the known good card then you know that the original card isn't working well.
I would speculate that it is more likely to be an antenna problem rather than a card problem. Either the antenna connection to the card has come loose or the antenna wire through the hinges has become damaged.

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