Have I BT antenna in my system ?

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micro133 · #1 Post by **micro133** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 5:31 pm

Hello everybody !

Have I BT antenna in 2373-B91 ?

How Do you check this ? I was looking in hardware maintenance manual in section about screen dissasembling but my system model B91 is completely not listed.

Regards
Grzegorz Heldt

#2 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 6:53 pm

Maybe this link posted by forum member hiyel will help you out.

http://www.badongo.net/pic/142180

micro133 · #3 Post by **micro133** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 8:00 am

OK, thanks !

EOMtp · #4 Post by **EOMtp** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:25 pm

http://www.badongo.net/pic/142180

This picture is not accurate with respect to factory-installed BT antenna. The antenna wire is white, but it is wrapped in a bundle with the WiFi antennas using clear plastic spiral wrap. One cannot see individual wires at the hinge, as shown in the picture.

To see if the BT antenna exists, remove the keyboard and check for a white wire (approx. 10cm long) coming from underneath the top left side of the keyboard bezel.

#5 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 12:58 pm

On my T42, I can clearly see the two WiFi leads (with the aid of a magnifier), but there is no wire for Bluetooth. On my T42, these wires are not wrapped in clear plastic spiral wrap. Below is the thread I pulled the image link from. IMO, it is certainly possible that a change in manufacturing procedures could have occurred either before the photo was taken or after.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 976#144976

#6 Post by **Johan** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 2:02 pm

... sorry, Grzegorz, but I don't think there's any Bluetooth antenna in your system.

If you open the "ThinkPad Computer Hardware Maintenance Manual" (of February 2006) - at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... 192_01.pdf - and search for "antenna", then you'll find 62 hits. Checking them through you don’t find your 2373-B91 listed anywhere...

Perhaps the easiest (+ safest and cheapest!) option is to buy a Bluetooth USB-stick, or a Bluetooth PCMCIA interface (all such devices are having built-in antennas). That’ll save you for having to disassemble your laptop. Maybe the coverage/range with such devices is slightly poorer, compared to the ThinkPad built-in Bluetooth antenna, but personally I wouldn't like to have to disassemble my ThinkPad!

Best regards,

Johan

#7 Post by **Johan** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 2:47 pm

By the way, if you're really seriously technically interested, you might want to check how the WLAN and Bluetooth antennas inside e.g. IBM's laptops are made, and how they look and perform! If so, please see these papers:

http://www.hitachi-cable.co.jp/ICSFiles ... view07.pdf
- entitled: "Development of Film Type Antenna for Mobile Devices"

http://www.hitachi-cable.co.jp/ICSFiles ... /1_h05.pdf
- entitled: "Wide-band wireless LAN antenna for IEEE 802.11 a/b/g"

... which shows how the antennas inside looks. Actually, I have a small (6-page) report showing these very Hitachi antennas mounted inside a ThinkPad R40, but

I just can't find this report any longer on the internet. If you want to see it (or if anybody else wants to!), please send me a PM, and I'll mail it to you. If anybody wants to host it, well, you're very welcome!

If you wish to search for this report yourself, this is the info:

(title:) Photographs of 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz dual band Hitachi WLAN antenna assembly of ISL39200M miniPCI WLAN card assembled in IBM R40 Notebook Host.

(subtitle:) WLAN miniPCI Card details:
Description: dual band 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz WLAN MiniPCI Card
FCC ID: RGS39200M1
Brand name: GlobespanVirata
Model number: ISL39200M

Best regards,

Johan
- and, yes, I'm an antenna engineer...

ZPrime · #8 Post by **ZPrime** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 3:36 pm

FWIW, on a T42, if you see two cables on one side, you have both WiFi and Bluetooth. There is most definitely no "clear plastic" wrapping them, although they do have one or more layers of black tape/heatshrink around the antenna itself if it's in a high-stress area.

The Left side of the screen has the white bluetooth antenna and the light gray wifi one.

The right side of the screen gets the other wifi antenna.

The two wifi antennas terminate in the two little textured plastic areas around the frame of the LCD. The gray one ends up on the top left-of-center, while the black one ends on the right side.

The bluetooth antenna terminates right next to where the display cable enters the panel - if you look at the two plastic screw covers on the panel, the bluetooth antenna ends between them.

the inverter for the backlight on the LCD is directly behind the clearplate.

Disclaimer: this is for a 15" T42p. the 14" models may be slightly different but it should be close. I just had mine open to replace the inverter, LCD, and cable (yay IBM warranty parts). It was NOT a fun procedure...

The easy way to tell if your model has the antennae is to look it up in tabook.pdf (the "PSRef" or Personal Systems Reference file).

The easy way to see where the antennae actually are is to look at the hardware maintenance manual.

micro133 · #9 Post by **micro133** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:52 pm

OK, thanks for everyone.

After opening LCD cover I know that this model hasn't bluetooth antenna installed.

I was thinking about buy bluetooth kit on ebay, but I buy yesterday another thinkpad with bluetooth installed.

Thanks for all.

Regards.

Have I BT antenna in my system ?

Have I BT antenna in my system ?

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