Thinkpads Forum

Any recommendations for a USB AC Wifi adapter for the Thinkpad T60P?

Thanks

taichi wrote:Any recommendations for a USB AC Wifi adapter for the Thinkpad T60P?

Thanks

Why USB? Reception will suffer without any doubt. If you're interested in taking advantage of AC speeds, an integrated card would serve your purposes much better.

Ok. I'm expanding my query to best internal and USB AC adapters.

Long ago I had a more or less constant memory parity error until I removed the internal wifi card. The problem went away immediately, never to return. That's when I went USB.

So...it was likely the internal N card that went bad, though I wonder if it's possible that the card socket might have gone south.

A couple of things here...

1) Any internal AC card will require a modded (Zender's) BIOS to be flashed prior to installation.

2) If you're still on Vista, you may want to give Intel's 7260AC a shot, I believe that the W7 drivers *should* work there...

http://ark.intel.com/products/75439/Int ... ss-AC-7260

You will need a half-size adapter for this one as well, which can be obtained for a few bucks...

https://www.amazon.com/Half-Express-Ada ... B009A29A8W

I am not affiliated with the seller, this was just the first pick that Google offered for the adapter in question.

Happy upgrading.

ajkula66 wrote: I am not affiliated with the seller, this was just the first pick that Google offered for the adapter in question.

You don't need an 'adapter'. All you need is something to keep the card held down.

Dimensions I use are 28mm X 8mm, with a 3mm hole drilled near one of the long ends.
Material can be anything thin (1-3mm) and stiff.

taichi, ajkula66 and jaspen-meyer:

I just upgraded my routers to TP-Link Archer C7 AC and put an Intel AC 7260 Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 2x2 Network plus Bluetooth adapter (7260.HMWWB.R) mini-pc wifi card with adapter in my X61. I friggin' love it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N7 ... UTF8&psc=1

http://www.ebay.com/itm/322406553653?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

Note: The above are aparently the same "revised" cards. There are a lot of older versions of the card for sale out there. I searched and bought the revised card for my wife's T61p (coming in the mail) but have the older version AC 7260 HMW installed in my X61 with no problems.

But I had already flashed the BIOS with Middleton's BIOS to remove the whitelist on the X61 years ago to accomodate the 4965AGN-wifi card I had installed in the X61. So, all I had to do to get the X61 working with the AC 7260 was download the drivers from the Intel website (for Windows 10 - which by the way I also love on the X61 and the T61p),

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/produc ... ss-AC-7260

install the AC 7260 mini-pc card with adapter,

http://www.ebay.com/itm/262289730083?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

set up the router's SSID's etc., and renamed my Thinkvantage Access Connections locations to "2.4GHz" and "5GHz" and was good to go. Getting between 144.4 Mbps to ~333 Mbps on 2.4GHz and up to ~866 Mbps on 5GHz (of course that is in the local area network, so connection with the internet is still way slow, because I refuse to pay for the high priced high speed internet...)

But in trying to install the same AC 7260 card in my T61p, I have a couple of issues I would like your help with:

1. The T61p has three antennas. The AC 7260 card only has two, so I taped off the middle white antenna and am just using the left gray antenna and the right black antenna. (How robust inside compared to the cramped X61 - I would love the performance of the T61 in the size of the X61). Is there an Intel AC 7260 card with three antennas?

2. I never flashed the BIOS on the T61p's because they didn't need it because they shipped with N-wireless when the X61 did not have N-wireless. So, I see that ajkula66 recommends Zender's BIOS. Where can I find it? (And just for information's sake, did Middleton not make a BIOS for the T61p?)

Finally, I appreciate all your help in the past and thank you in advance for any help you can provide with this issue now.

Please have a healthy and prosperous New Year.

E350 wrote:[
But in trying to install the same AC 7260 card in my T61p, I have a couple of issues I would like your help with:

1. The T61p has three antennas. The AC 7260 card only has two, so I taped off the middle white antenna and am just using the left gray antenna and the right black antenna. (How robust inside compared to the cramped X61 - I would love the performance of the T61 in the size of the X61). Is there an Intel AC 7260 card with three antennas?

AFAIK, no.

2. I never flashed the BIOS on the T61p's because they didn't need it because they shipped with N-wireless when the X61 did not have N-wireless. So, I see that ajkula66 recommends Zender's BIOS. Where can I find it? (And just for information's sake, did Middleton not make a BIOS for the T61p?)

Zender's BIOS is for T60 and related models.

For T61 you need Middleton's.

Success again with the Intel AC 7260 wifi card!

5GHz = 866Mbps baby!!!
2.4GHz = 144.4 Mbps !!!

Interesting (and this also happened with the X61 with the same card) although after flashing the BIOS I didn't get an 1802 Error code, the card was not recognized, so I went into Device Manager and there it was, and it was acting properly, and when I went to Update Driver it said it already had the best driver. So, I restarted the laptop again and it was recognized and worked fine on 2.4GHz.

But it would not connect on 5GHz. So I went to Thinkvantage Access Connections location profile for my 5GHz and it still had the AGN card in there for the adapter. So I deleted that location profile and then hit Find and found the 5GHZ SSID that the router was sending out and built a new Multi Access Connection location profile around it which automatically recognized the AC 7260 card.

And now all is good.

BTW, I ended up finding that Windows 10 has its own CD/DVD buning software which, once I red 'bout it, was easy to burn the 7lug26us.iso image to CD. One thing to remember it will cycle continuously unless you pop the CD out after the machine shuts down before it automatically restarts.

Thanks RBS!

And thanks ajkula66!