Thinkpads Forum

Hi everyone,

I've bought an X61s from ebay which is supposed to be an US Model. It came with two WWan antennas build in, but the card taken out (At least, there are two antenna cables, ending at the wwan slot and a pull out antenna on the display).
There is a sim card slot behind the door to the RAM slot.
I've read around the forum, some topics where helpful, but also raised even more questions.

Is there a point at all to buy a miniPCIe wwan card, or do the antennas work only for American Network frequencies (EV-DO vs. HSDPA)? I live in Germany.

What card should I get to make use of the diversity function on HSDPA(3,6/7,2Mbit)?

Will the Thinkpads sim card slot work with any miniPCIe wwan card, or would i have to disassemble keyboard and breezel any time I change the SIM?

I would use Zender's bios mod, if necessary. Also the pin 20 trick would be acceptable.

Does it matter at all, if the card is Lenovo branded when I use Zenders bios?

Many thanks in advance


hanseatic
Thank you in advance

hanseatic wrote:Is there a point at all to buy a miniPCIe wwan card, or do the antennas work only for American Network frequencies (EV-DO vs. HSDPA)? I live in Germany.

What card should I get to make use of the diversity function on HSDPA(3,6/7,2Mbit)?

Will the Thinkpads sim card slot work with any miniPCIe wwan card, or would i have to disassemble keyboard and breezel any time I change the SIM?

I would use Zender's bios mod, if necessary. Also the pin 20 trick would be acceptable.

Does it matter at all, if the card is Lenovo branded when I use Zenders bios?

Welcome to the Forum! Here are the answers to your questions, in order:
-- Antennas will work with European frequencies.
-- Ericsson F3507g or Sierra Wireless MC8780. Neither one is supported by the standard X61s BIOS.
-- You must disassemble the keyboard/bezel to install the WWAN card, but not to change the SIM card. (I don't quite understand your question.) Any WWAN card you install will work -- you may need modified BIOS and/or Pin-20 taping -- but once the card is installed, changing the SIM card is done from the bottom of the machine, next to the RAM. The exception is that there are MiniPCIe cards which have the SIM holder mounted right on top of the card. If you use one of those, then you are stuck with using that SIM holder.
-- If you use a modified BIOS, then it does not matter if the card is Lenovo-branded, except that Fn+F5 may or may not work to enable or disable the card. Note that this issue also exists if you use a Lenovo-branded card from a different series machine which the X61s does not support.

One last point:
It is questionable if using a card which supports diversity will get you anywhere near the 7.2 speed theoretically possible, or even marginally faster than a card without diversity. Verify if it makes any difference in Hamburg. You can save yourself lots of time and annoyance if you use the Lenovo-branded European version of the Sierra Wireless MC8775 (FRU #42T0931). It is unlocked (i.e., will accept any carrier's SIM card) and will work perfectly in the X61s without any BIOS and/or Pin-20 "game playing".

Will it work in Israel?