Thinkpads Forum

HI there, anyone here has any luck using the 2nd minipci-e slot on the T60 for other expansion card than a WWAN?

I bought a broadcom HD accelerator minipci-e card hoping to use it with my T60, however the card wouldn't work in the 2nd slot, only in the 1st slot (the one with WLAN card originally installed.) FYI I tried a WWAN card in the 2nd slot and it did work, so it seems there is some kind of hardware/software limitation implemented by Lenovo.

Is this something that can be easily hacked?

Thanks.

MiniPCIe standard provides signals for PCI-Express and USB 2.0.

The second port in T60 is meant for WWAN so it only provides USB signals as probably all WWAN cards are USB devices. However, if that wasn't enough, the USB device attached there is checked by BIOS upon bootup and if it isn't one of the WWAN cards installed in T60-s by Lenovo, then the BIOS throws out an error and refuses to boot until the card is removed.

If you install a device using the PCI-Express lane instead of USB, the notebook simply won't see it because of the missing signals on the connector.

The BIOS error could be defeated by patching the BIOS image. Fellow member Zender has knowledge on how to do that as he has modified the BIOS to accept WWAN cards not meant to be used in T60 by Lenovo. There's a very long thread here about this.