T23 and Verizon WWAN disaster

[anothertattoo]

I could use some wisdom and insight on this one if someone has experience with it. Got an awesome ThinkPad T23, 1.2 Ghz, non-wireless, Windows XP SP2, 256 MB RAM (appears much faster) that I just love, with one MAJOR exception…..I have had no luck whatsoever with two different Verizon Broadband PC Cards: Audiovox PC5740 and a Sierra Novatel Wireless V620 and Verizon of course is ZERO help, technically speaking. They are polite and willing to listen though so far.

When I first got the laptop I plugged in the PC5740 card, it detected it as a Curitel PC Card and installed the drivers. I then installed VZ Access Manager (Verizon’s connectivity app version 5.3). I launched the app, configured it for the card, and connected to the Internet…..well kinda. It would timeout every few minutes. Naturally I upgraded to the latest VZ Access Manager 6.2.4 and everything worked fine and connected to their CDMA network for a day. The next day, the laptop would hang at the XP Splash screen until I removed the card. Once I put the card back in, either the mouse would freeze or I would get the Blue-Screen-of-Death. This happened repeatedly no matter what I tried. And trust me I have tried it from nearly every angle.

I upgraded the BIOS to the latest (1.2) and embedded controller to the latest (1.06a) from Lenovo’s website. I also tried running the latest T23 IBM AccessConnections software instead of VZ Access Manager (uninstalling it obviously). That didn’t help. I called Verizon and they sent me the Novatel Wireless V620 to try. The latest AccessConnections said it supported this card and I thought to myself, “Great!! This one will work”. No dice. It installed successfully at first but after a reboot it no longer senses it correctly but instead its seen in the Device Manager as an “Unknown Data Device”, mouse freezes, or once again, a blue-screen. This sucks big time.

There is definitely something with either my PC Card slot or with these cards and I am not sure which yet. The Verizon rep said that they have not had much luck with Thinkpads and their WWAN cards so that didn’t help my confidence any. I never had a problem with my three previous laptops (Dell, HP, and Fujitsu) and these cards. I really need this to work otherwise I will have to get cable/DSL broadband installed and have to deal with the nightmare known as local cable\telecom.

Is anyone have any ideas or are successfully using a PC Card\PCMCIA with there non-embedded wireless T23? What about a Cisco Aironet card and a home router? Are those working? I need to figure out some options fast. Being without Internet at home is a disaster.

I love this forum by the way. Thanks to anyone who can help.

[truk]

A good course of action would probable be to uninstall any traces of those devices from the device manager, and then re-install the device with the latest driver from their site (hopefully you can find a dial-up or ethernet link somewhere.) If you have anything else for a pcmcia card for testing, I would advise trying it. If you can borrow a normal wireless card it would be the best.

I don't believe there is a problem running external wireless cards on the t23 either, but I run them on a t30.

[DrSmile]

I am successfully running an 802.11G wireless PCMCIA card on my T23. It's a 3Com OfficeConnect card and I got it off ebay for $20. It does WPA2 which is what I was looking for, but it will absolutely NOT work with Access Connections (believe me I've tried). I am using the 3 Com utility that comes with the card which works great but has one annoying caveat... you can put it in the startup menu but it will ALWAYS start in an open window, meaning you have to manually minimize it after hibernate/reboot. All in all I'm happy, except that I'm having trouble getting WPA2 working when I boot ubuntu...

The install is really odd with these cards, you can't just install the driver, you HAVE to install the utility or Windows 2000 will not recognize the card.