Question about Intel 4965 AGN

[cy2132]

I opened the palmrest of my X61. The Intel 4965 AGN card is in one of the two PCI-E slots (In the left one).

I changed the card to the right slot and then the card didn't work. (reinstalled driver... tried everything but didn't work)
So I put the card back to the left slot and it worked again.

Now I don't really care about the card being in right or left. I just want to know why.

I sold this card to someone a few month ago. He claimed the card wasn't working so he sent it back and I gave him the refund. It sounds like his problem might be what I just found tonight?

Anyone knows the reason why the card only works on the left slot?

[erik]

afaik the right slot is only for turbo memory and don't think anything else can be configured in that slot.

[duffy]

Well the WWAN module can also reside in the right slot.

Lenovo (and formally IBM) play games with the supposedly standards compliant mini PCI-Express slots on their machines. I believe they hardwire the slot so that only cards sold by them work correctly. So even though the 4985 is a generic card Lenovo modifies them so that they only work on Lenovo machines. Switch it around and you'll find that if you purchase a generic 4985 card it will not work correctly in Lenovo machines. You'll get a BIOS error at boot and then if you can get past that it won't work correctly once you boot into Windows.

[ryengineer]

Yes either WWAN or Turbo memory works in that slot.