Thinkpads Forum

hi,

I have a T61 (6459-CT0) that was my late brother's. It has a built in Intel 3945ABG card from when it was purchased new.

Unless I'm in the same room as the router, signal strength and connection speed are usually reported 1/2 of what my other laptops give me (T41 and T60, both with Intel cards that came already installed.)

I've looked and both antenna wires are connected to the card itself. I've tried various drivers from both the Intel and Lenovo sites. Different power management settings. Nothing changes it.

Is there anything I can do?

Since I have recently upgraded my router to a Netgear WNR-3500 Wireless-N, can I swap out the 3945 with an N card like -> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833106040 (I assume I'd get an 1802 error and need to use a whitelist bios).

Thanks.

Well, you can screw around with your bios if you like - on the other hand you can probably find a thinkpad compatible wireless N card relatively easily here in the Marketplace or on ebay - there's one for sale right now:

http://cgi.ebay.ca/IBM-LENOVO-THINKPAD- ... 20b00aac3f

See also the e-bay url in message 2 of this thread

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=86202

Mark_Venture wrote:I assume I'd get an 1802 error and need to use a whitelist bios.

You would be correct. You could try to see if there's a there's a firmware update for you router, though if you've got a new router and it still doesn't work, that seems unlikely to fix it. If you don't mind used, you could probably pick up a genuine Thinkpad card on ebay for $10-15, either an Intel or a Thinkpad card.

Did you try reversing the Main and Aux antenna wires on the card?

sktn77a wrote:Did you try reversing the Main and Aux antenna wires on the card?

No, I haven't.

Do you think that could help? I did make sure the two were connected to the card. And because of how the wires are shaped, and their lengths, it appears they are connected to the "correct" terminals.

I'm really wondering if the card is "bad", developing problems, antenna wire broken, or what?

I don't recall when I started noticing the problem (was it before or after I had the keyboard replaced). But it was certainly prior to my getting the new router.

Mark_Venture wrote:Unless I'm in the same room as the router, signal strength and connection speed are usually reported 1/2 of what my other laptops give me (T41 and T60, both with Intel cards that came already installed.)

Check ALL the power settings related to WiFi operation and make sure they are set to Mximum Performance (or similar). You will probably need to look in the Device Driver, Power Manager and Access Connections to get all the place that power levels may have been set to something other than Maximum Performance.

Cheers,

Bill