Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

Does someone here have experience of suggestion for adding WLAN (Wifi) to a ThinkCentre M90 USFF (Ultra Small Form Factor) tiny laptop?

It has a free PCI (parallel) slot ; I believe which is likely 32-bit PCI 2.3. However, I can not find any PCI (not PCI-E) wireless card.
32-bit PCI offers theorical bandwidth of 133 Mo/s.

Then, I assume the two possible options are:
- USB 2.0 Wifi Adapter key, probably the easiest to set up but will it have acceptable bandwidth for everyday web browsing ?
- a RJ45 to Wifi Access Point (WAP), which will likely be harder to configure

Wireless USB 2.0 offers in theory 400 Mbit/s at a distance of 3 m and 112 Mbit/s at 10 m.
I assume real bandwidth would be slower. Furthermore the router is on another floor and certainly distant about 15 meters.

So, I assume this model of ThinkCenter can hardly access Internet at reasonable speed through WiFi, and should stay with RJ45 Ethernet connection.

Thank your for your suggestions.

thinktwice wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:24 am

It has a free PCI (parallel) slot ; I believe which is likely 32-bit PCI 2.3. However, I can not find any PCI (not PCI-E) wireless card.

They are not as common nowadays, but they do exist. AR9220-chipset based solutions, for example. Others as well.

thinktwice wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:24 am

Wireless USB 2.0 offers in theory 400 Mbit/s at a distance of 3 m and 112 Mbit/s at 10 m.
I assume real bandwidth would be slower. Furthermore the router is on another floor and certainly distant about 15 meters.

So, I assume this model of ThinkCenter can hardly access Internet at reasonable speed through WiFi, and should stay with RJ45 Ethernet connection.

It's not about this model of ThinkCenter. WiFi is always prone to interference, significant speed drops as a function of distance and obstacles, and huge differences between theoretical maximum and actual speeds. The interface is rarely the culprit.

But for an adequate browsing experience, you don't really need more than 30Mbps, unless you stream 4K video all the time in parallel to file downloads (A single 4K stream typically requires ~25Mbps, according to latest data I've seen). And what is your bandwidth you buy from your ISP anyway?

I'm currently using a USB WiFi adapter (Archer T3U AC1300) inside my Thinkpad X220 because its WLAN slot died.
While the adapter is USB 3.0 capable, the X220 only has USB 2.0 ports (except for the i7 models with one USB 3.0 port on the left side next to the exhaust vent, and another wired to the docking connector).



From experience, it can take my home internet's 50 megabits/sec bandwidth with no issues, and do 100 megabits/sec WiFi to WiFi (on the same router) transfers via FTP (copying files between laptops). With one laptop plugged to the router's gigabit Ethernet port, FTP transfer speeds doubled to around 200 megabits/sec.

Note that the other laptop only has a WiFi N card with a max of 300 megabits/sec (it's another X220 with an Intel 6205 WiFi card).

If that's good enough for you, then a USB-based adapter will do fine.

PCI WiFi cards are very hard to find these days because PCI-based WiFi chips haven't been made in over a decade.
Also, you'll probably won't find a PCI WiFi AC card-- all the AC chips I've seen or heard of are PCIe-based.

A quick Amazon search yields this WiFi N dual-band PCI card: https://www.amazon.com/Bewinner-Wireles ... 07VV5TGDN/