Thinkpads Forum

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?

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

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.

Yes either WWAN or Turbo memory works in that slot.