Made in China ebay wireless N cards reliable?

[RealBlackStuff]

It would help if you tell us which wifi card and which Windows version you have...

[ajkula66]

It's not an Intel card.

It's a ThinkPad one.

Proceed accordingly.

[fefrie]

It would help if you tell us which wifi card and which Windows version you have...

It's the one as posted in the first post with the ebay link.

But I think ajkula identified it correctly for me?

[db130]

Will the Atheros AR5BXB112 card on ebay work on a T60 motherboard that has the Slic BIOS installed? It's a Win7 pro 64-bit machine

[ajkula66]

Will the Atheros AR5BXB112 card on ebay work on a T60 motherboard that has the Slic BIOS installed?

Yes.

[banhammer420k]

It should also be mentioned that prices on the AR9380 cards suddenly shot up in price nearly $10, but have come back down (even from USA based sellers) about $5 from that price spike and can be talked down to about $15 shipped via "best offer" eBay.

I regret not getting more when they were easily had for $12.50 shipped! I even could have got one mounted on a 3x3 PCIe bracket to put in my desktop for $13 shipped from China, oh well...

[db130]

Will the Atheros AR5BXB112 card on ebay work on a T60 motherboard that has the Slic BIOS installed?

Yes.

I just bought that card and installed it. I googled for the appropriate driver and found this post:

http://www.maxwhale.com/atheros-ar9380- ... -7-driver/

I'm getting ~25 Mbps down/5 up with this card with my T60 2007-55U laptop which appears to be a 20% increase in speed compared to my other 2007-55U which has the Intel WM3945ABG card.

I also get the wifi indicator under the LCD screen with that driver above.

[Ratatata]

I bought one Atheros-N (AR5008 / AR5418 / AR5BXB72) card a while back from China. It lacks Lenovo FRU markings, but still works without modified BIOS. With my 60/10Mbps connection I got about 50-60/10Mbps from Speedtest.net in apartment building area with very "thick" air and 2 out of 3 antennae connectors occupied. WLAN activty LED works.

However at some point I started getting ATI X1400 NMI memory parity errors, that may or may not be related. I know that T60 Intel 3965ABG with certain drivers may cause such issues, but maybe in my case just the GPU bit got damaged after replacing heatsink thermal pads.

E: In fact it does have FRU markings, but they do not belong to T60 (or any other model AFAIK). FRU# is 42T0815 as opposed to the 42T0825 listed in T60's HMM.

[91011]

just bought that card and installed it. I googled for the appropriate driver and found this post:

http://www.maxwhale.com/atheros-ar9380- ... -7-driver/

Nice find and it does re-enable the WiFi indicator on a x301.

But Fn+f5 and the radio on/off switch no longer work with the WiFI radio on the x301.

They still work on the T60?

This is the driver I use on a x301 & x201 that has no WiFi indicator but Fn+f5 and radio switch works: Atheros AR9380 win7-10.0.0.234-whql

[db130]

They still work on the T60.

[Easy Wind]

curious on the N cards and T60's......Don't you need a third antennae coming down from the LCD lid in order to get the N speeds? So if you only have 2 wires coming down from the LCD lid you can't go "N" without that third cable? Or at least that is what I always thought....

[ajkula66]

You can do "N" just fine with two antennae...with a 300Mbps cap, I believe...

[Cigarguy]

Under ideal condition, I'm getting "N" speed on a T60 with Intel 6200N card.

[RealBlackStuff]

The third antenna is only used (but NOT required) if you have a MIMO card.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIMO
On a 3-wire card, you attach GRAY to the left, WHITE (MIMO) to the middle and BLACK to the right connector.
The card will work fine (albeit a bit slower) without the middle wire.
From T61 onwards, many Thinkpads already come with 3 antenna wires.

[Easy Wind]

Under ideal condition, I'm getting "N" speed on a T60 with Intel 6200N card.

You have a 1/2 sized wireless card in a T60? Interesting! How is it held down in place though as the mounting screw holes would not line up?

[Cigarguy]

You have a 1/2 sized wireless card in a T60? Interesting! How is it held down in place though as the mounting screw holes would not line up?

A simple half size to full size adapter bought on eBay. It's relatively cheap. I think I bought 10 at the time to make it worthwhile.

[fefrie]

Well, I just installed the card with the thinkpad wireless drivers.

I'm doing a file transfer from my desktop via ethernet to my laptop via wireless n.

I am a bit distant from my router and the router I have has 'adequate' range, but I'm only getting max throughput of about 3200kbps, which is nowhere near 150mbps or even 50mpbs which I would have been happy with. Filetransfers from the desktop to laptop are not as fast as I would have hoped.

Throughput averages out at about 2500kbps which is faster than what I was having with the stock card.

I'll consider this upgrade to N a null experience. It's probably to have the network switch over to N anyways with the 7 users on the network. There should be enough overhead to share the 7.5mbps connection and whatnot.

[banhammer420k]

I just got another AR9380 for my t61p as I put the other one I have in my X61t, and I have one in a mini PCIe to PCIe adapter on my desktop... but on the T61p specifically I can't get it to see 5ghz networks at all. Could this be a problem with the card itself?

I'm running Windows 7 with the latest drivers on each machine.

[banhammer420k]

If you expected to actually get 150mbps, you will never see file transfer rates of 150mb/s on N. Even with a 450mb/s connection you wouldn't see file transfers that fast from one computer to another. Not to mention you may very well be going through your ISP and not directly from device to device. Basically, it sounds like something needs to be reconfigured in your network, but at the same time it sounds like you're expecting faster than realistic speeds. Maybe wait to upgrade to AC. That said N is a giant improvement over G and if you don't see any difference with 7~ users on the network something needs to be changed or fixed. Maybe you're using a cheapo single antenna router?

Well, I just installed the card with the thinkpad wireless drivers.

I'm doing a file transfer from my desktop via ethernet to my laptop via wireless n.

I am a bit distant from my router and the router I have has 'adequate' range, but I'm only getting max throughput of about 3200kbps, which is nowhere near 150mbps or even 50mpbs which I would have been happy with. Filetransfers from the desktop to laptop are not as fast as I would have hoped.

Throughput averages out at about 2500kbps which is faster than what I was having with the stock card.

I'll consider this upgrade to N a null experience. It's probably to have the network switch over to N anyways with the 7 users on the network. There should be enough overhead to share the 7.5mbps connection and whatnot.

[fefrie]

I know that i'm getting the full throughput from my isp to my laptop. So that is good. Burst speed is working properly.

I was just hoping that I would get close to 80-90mbps transfer from a desktop connected to the router via ethernet since the ethernet ports are only 100mbps ports.

Although my router is a linksys e900 which is the cheapest router that they have that can be converted to tomato firmware. It's not known for having the greatest wireless range.

My laptop reports 150mbps two rooms away and 300mbps standing right next to it. That sort of sounds great, but it really emphasizes how quickly the signal degrades.

[fefrie]

Well the card is officially dead.

It needs to be restarted multiple time an hour by going into standby and waking up from that.

Maybe I'll try this other card.

Any links to installing the special bios?

[Cigarguy]

Any links to installing the special bios?

Into what machine? A T42? If so RBS have already answered that question for you in a previous post in this thread. Lenovo have provide decent instructions on their website too.

[fefrie]

It's a t60.

I think for simplicity sake, I'll just go with the same card and leave it at that....