Thinkpads Forum

howdy folks,

I have a T60p 2623-DDU, 15" uxga; which I'm thinking of changing to Wifi-N.

As I understand it, N -requires- a 3rd antenna, and the T60p 15" was never shipped with such....is that correct?

I've read the thread about adding one inside the base, and I can do that....but I need to pull my LCD completely apart one of these days anyway (due to visible-sized dirt having gotten between backlight and lcd)....

So since I'll be doing hours of LCD disassy and assy work anyway, I'd like to take that opportunity to put a 3rd antenna in there....if it's possible.

Note that this machine has the WWAN installed, and although I'm not using it at this time due to lack of service at the rural cabin where we live, I do want to keep it intact. There's always hope that another tower will be going up someday...

Which brings me to specific questions:

1- Do T61's come with BOTH wwan and wifi-n installed?.....i.e., can all 4 antennas coexist in the lid?

2- Are the T61 antennas for 'N' available as an individual part, or only as a complete lid assy?

3- Does anyone have an extra antenna, or a smashed T61 lcd available cheaply?

4- Those who have added a 3rd antenna to a T60 in the base...which antenna/cable exactly did you use for the job?

And of course, any other advice and observations will be welcome.

thanks,

Richard

Have a similar question, on a T60p 2008_8JU

For N seems like there is 3rd antenna, and for WWAN there are two antennas. So if one tries to put in both the WWAN card and N wireless card, you would end up with 5 antenna wires.

Is that possible ? The Wireless 3rd N antenna ( white wire ) and WWAN main antenna ( red wire ) seem to have same connector on the lcd assembly..

I had two 15" T60p's at the same time. One had a Verizon WWAN with Intel ABG the other no WWAN option and Atheros ABGN. The first had four antennas, two wifi and two WWAN. The second had three antennas, gray, black and white, all wifi. The third antenna, the white one, seemed to terminate under the LCD bezel near the WWAN cover. I didn't disassemble either T60p too far, but it appeared that the third antenna would fit with the WWAN, since one of the WWAN antennas terminate in the protruding hump on the right side of the LCD (the other WWAN antenna terminates under the palmrest).

Bottom line, I think five antennas will fit. I haven't seen any T60p's listed in a TABOOK with both the 11n and WWAN options, but one would assume they were available for CTO orders.

The 3rd wlan antenna and the main wwan antenna can not co-exist. I just ordered both, and they are both ment to be installed in the same place on the right side of the LCD cover lid (replacing the wwan cover). I am going to install the wwan main antenna and try to see if I can fit a generic wlan antenna somewhere else on the LCD lid, maybe to the left side.

UC and Nihan, thanks much for your posts.

Nihan, when you say "WWAN cover", I presume you mean the 'bump' on the right edge, yes?

UC, from what Nihan said, it sounds like the 'n' and wwan won't coexist there on the right. So we'd be sticking another one in the base somewhere.

Will any wifi-ant with the right tiny connector work?

In other words, is 'n' still strictly 2.4ghz?....or does it utilize 5.8ghz as well?

Wireless is great stuff.....until you have half a dozen devices to mount that all use it...

And why they ever chose the wifi band for bluetooth is beyond my comprehension.

I play my music over a BT audio-link to the stereo system Aux ins.

I did a large file-copy over the wifi last night, and my music went all to he*l. I'd heard of cases of interference between wifi and BT....but I didn't expect it to happen between my own two co-mounted devices!

I'm going to do a little research into choosing channels....hopefully eliminate that little problem...

Nihan wrote:The 3rd wlan antenna and the main wwan antenna can not co-exist. I just ordered both, and they are both ment to be installed in the same place on the right side of the LCD cover lid (replacing the wwan cover). I am going to install the wwan main antenna and try to see if I can fit a generic wlan antenna somewhere else on the LCD lid, maybe to the left side.

If you could take pix of both and post them up, that would be very helpful. Can't they just be sistered and screwed in together? There's some room in there.

dozer wrote:I did a large file-copy over the wifi last night, and my music went all to he*l. I'd heard of cases of interference between wifi and BT....but I didn't expect it to happen between my own two co-mounted devices!

Which WiFi card are you using?

Cheers,

Bill B.

As Nihan says they both go on the right side. There is nothing on the left side to hold / screw fittings. Thinking of desoldering one antenna / wire and putting it to the other antenna, there by having 2 wires running of a single antenna.

underclocker wrote: If you could take pix of both and post them up, that would be very helpful. Can't they just be sistered and screwed in together? There's some room in there.

Here are a couple of pictures of both. One with the red cable is the wwan main antenna and the other one is the 3rd wlan antenna.
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/475/img4787.jpg
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/4610/img4789.jpg

BTW, does anyone know how the flat antenna that comes with the wwan antenna kit, is supposed to be installed? It's the flat black thingy in the pictures (fru: 41w4945).

Superb pictures, certainly worth 1000 words each!

Clearly you can not sister them, but I'd say you can pull the white wifi antenna wire from the metal/plastic insert and solder it to the WWAN metal/plastic insert. I'm not an electrical engineer or a radio technician, but perhaps someone else can comment on whether this would/might be an issue.

How crazy that you couldn't order 11n with the WWAN option. I suppose 11n was so new that there were no design plans for it when the T60p was developed.

It's an old thread but just for the information, it is possible to use both wireless-N and WWAN option simultaneously and 5 antennas. My T60p came with wireles-N and no WWAN and I upgraded it to WWAN with both antennas (red in LCD lid and blue under the keyboard bezel, near LCD lower edge).
It took some fiddling to fit both white 3rd wifi antenna and WWAN antenna in LCD but eventually it worked out perfectly.

Nice modding, it's good to hear that it fits/works. Five antennas!

Raceboy - Any chance of some pic's of your 5-Antenna T60p? -

Peak2Peak wrote:Raceboy - Any chance of some pic's of your 5-Antenna T60p? -

I'm curious too, because few weeks ago I've tried to put four antennas and the laptop kind of became crowded

I will change out the wifi card as soon it arrives from Hong Kong and while it's apart, I'll take some photos.

I have a T61 lid that came with 5 antenna, had me scratching my head because the two extra are routed over to a dead-end under the turbo memory chip.


ps. I have a couple T61p displays that I'm using for parts, if anyone want a set of 3 antenna, let me know

I suppose on the T61, six antennas might be possible!

The T61 had a wireless USB adapter option that would connect to one antenna (FRU 42T0885). If you added that to a three antenna wireless Ethernet adapter and the WWAN option (which would replace the Turbo Memory adapter), then you'd have a six antenna machine!

I've wondered about the wireless usb... I've never seen any wireless usb devices to use with it, is that something that never caught on? I've had close to 100 T61's and never even seen one with this option... so I'm guessing they're pretty rare.