Thinkpads Forum

I recently bought an X300 in the UK, model N1214UK, which I now realise comes without the WWAN card. As I understand it my options are as follows:-

1. Buy the Vodafone HSDPA Embedded Mobile Broadband Option from Lenovo, or a dealer, which is the Sierra MC8775 card for 242 UK pounds. This is part number 43R1821 and the fully supported Lenovo solution.

2. Buy a generic or HP 'branded' Sierra Wireless MC8775 card for about 50 UK pounds off ebay which would required the Zender BIOS.

3. Try and source a faster MC8780 card and use the Zender BIOS if this will work.

4. Find another card that could be installed in the X300 that's cheaper than the Lenovo one. Looking at the X301 options on the UK Lenovo site, it lists the ThinkPad 3G BroadBand Option for 55 UK pounds, part number 43R9153 which is the Ericsson F3507g. Can anyone confirm if the Zender BIOS supports this combination (with the X300) or could it be an option in the future?

I should add that I already have a Vodafone USB dongle to give me WWAN access in the UK. However, it seems a terrible waste to have to use this when the X300 has the ability to do everything itself. The reason I'm not too keen on the fully supported Lenovo option, aside from the price, is that I would have to also drop down from 7.2mbps which I have with the dongle to 3.6mbps max. My SIM is from Vodafone who is the mobile provider that partners Lenovo in the UK so I assume I won't have a problem with my particular SIM card.

Anyway, if someone could let me know if option 4 is likely to work I'd appreciate it.

Thanks, James.

Option 2 & 3 works, also requires patching AccessConnections' .dlls or using 3G Watcher from Sierra Wireless to control it.
Options 4 works, recent AC will recognize it, however you will need to tape pin 20, and the card will ignore hardware wireless switch.

At least that's the experience of people I've talked to. There's also been at least one person for who the card from option 4 worked out of the box - after taping ping 20 - that is without patched BIOS. That's not because of Lenovo support, the card is not whitelisted, but it seems that the card isn't yet ready to respond when whitelist checking runs.

Like Zender said, option 2-3 works best on x300. I've used HP hs2300, MC8775 and MC8780 on my x300 and all of them work great. Personally I don't really recommend going for option 4, Ericsson F3507g/Qualcomm UNDP-1 won't be recognized on the x300 unless pin 20 is taped and even if it is, it's a pain switching it on and off.

The cheapest route is to get an HP hs2300 like option 2, patched the BIOS using Zender's mods (fairly easy on the x300 since it has an internal DVD, just burn the ISO, restart and follow instructions) and use Sierra Wireless latest 3G Watcher program to control it.

If you're looking for GPS as well, then MC8780 is the way to go.

Has anyone tried the HP un2400 card in a Lenovo? This is HP's version of Lenovo's UNDP-1 card.

I'm trying to choose between the Ericsson F3507G and the Qualcomm UNDP-1 - the first has GPS, the second has both EV-DO and HSDPA. I'd take the second one, but unfortunately, UNDP-1 cards are Verizon-locked, and I need it for the European Orange network.

I'm not sure if the HP un2400 will work in a Lenovo, let alone the x300.

Regarding signal quality, I tend to believe that Ericsson knows the European base stations better, but Qualcomm invented CDMA, so I don't know. I found sensitivity specs for the Qualcomm card, but none for the Ericsson. Specs are nominal, anyway.

Any opinion appreciated, thank you.

My experience of using a Lenovo Ericsson F3507g in a T60p a few months ago was not great - Found that it would continuously drop the connection intermittently be it after 1-minute or 1-hour (any UK network) with the Lenovo drivers available at the time - As I no longer have the card, I can not comment if the current Lenovo driver(s) would have cured the problems I was experiencing - Dell & Toshiba have a new firmware update, which is said to be enhancement for AT&T.

I was not aware that the Qualcomm UNDP-1 covers both technologies - EV-DO and HSDPA - I will probably get hold this card be it Lenovo or HP branded when prices become a little more affordable and evaluate.

I'm currently using a Huawei EM770, which has been pulled from an Advent notebook - The Huawei Mobile Partner client utility software have drivers that compliment and interface well with this card - connection is rock solid stable and fast accross "3"UK & T-Mobile UK - Please also note, previous WWAN cards I have tried and found successful, stable and work without prob's are the Sierra Wireless MC8775 & MC8780 - (T60p: BIOS patched, pin20 taped & Sierra Wireless software)

Thanks for the reply, this is what I was looking for.

I'm using Windows 7 64 bit now (just gave 4GB RAM to it), so you can imagine what a mess it will be to make WWAN work. But I will downgrade, if I have to.

I kept digging and the "Thinkvantage GPS" readme from the Lenovo site says it supports both the Ericsson F3507g and Qualcomm UNDP-1. This means the UNDP has GPS, as well (next to HSDPA and EV-DO). The accuracy is probably mediocre - I have seen Qualcomm-powered PDAs and the GPS is just a function of the main chipset, while the Ericsson card is said to have a dedicated GPS chip. Not that that would really matter in a laptop.

I can't find the Huawei EM770 online, so I'll pass. Pity, because I'm just playing with a USB Huawei E160 from Orange, for 15 days (for free), and in the appartment where my Qualcomm-based PDA phone keeps falling back to EDGE, the E160 downloads with 1.4 Mbps - definitely 3G. Amazing. Oh, and that is on a Linux laptop - the drivers don't work for Win7 x64.

The only thing I fear with Huawei is that once they gave me the card, they won't develop a new driver for Win7 x64.

Maybe I should just swallow and use the PDA as a modem.

Constantinus wrote:The only thing I fear with Huawei is that once they gave me the card, they won't develop a new driver for Win7 x64.

It would seem that the Huawei EM770 has been developed & E230 & E180 upgraded to support Windows-7 according to a press release dated December 2008 - I can only assume therefore, there must be beta drivers available currently (or maybe tweaked Vista drivers that are fully Windows 7 compatible - as Vista & Windows 7 essentially share the same code).

Constantinus wrote:I can't find the Huawei EM770 online, so I'll pass

The Huawei EM770 is available from UK vendor: purelygadgets - They will dispatch to most of the EU.

An alternative HSDPA/HSUPA WWAN module that supports 7.2Mbps U/L, 2.0Mbps D/L (or greater) & GPS is the Sierra Wireless MC8780 or MC8790 - both use the Sierra Wireless Watcher Utility that has drivers which support Windows-7. The MC8780 can be sourced from an AirCard 880U, which contains the module inside.

Thanks for the detailed info.

I already ordered a DELL 5530 (KM266), F3507g-based card from eBay.
It cost me 51 pounds, shipping included, so I'll live, if it isn't compatible with the x300.
If it's not, I'll give or sell it to a DELL-using colleague and get a Huawei or Sierra card.

Edit: what did you do to make the x300 accept the Huawei card? BIOS, pin 20, the usual?
Edit2: did you try using the Ericsson card with both HSDPA and GPS, at the same time? For Google Earth, for example?

Unfortunately my experiences with the WWAN cards I have evaluated were on a T60p - which required the BIOS to be patched with Pin20 taped and using the required Utility software & drivers. I would assume the same will be required for the X300 but can not say for sure

I did not test for using the HSDPA & GPS simultaneously when I had the Lenovo Ericsson WWAN module - but can confirm the GPS worked well with the ThinkVantage GPS software.

Do keep the forum updated on the progress of your installation of the DELL 5530 (KM266).

Sorry, you actually mentioned you have the T60P, not x300, but I forgot.

The F3507g DELL card I ordered is hardware revision A00 (based on the eBay photo). Most forum posts are about revision A0A. Furthermore, people say there is a firmware update available, published by DELL and Toshiba, but not by Lenovo, as of the 20th of June.

While waiting for the DELL card, I found the specs for the Huawei EM772 - besides HSPA, it has also WiFi and BlueTooth.
If it was available now, I would put it in my good old x40 and be happy. Not sure about the antenna connections and the SIM's place, though.

The Dell firmware update quotes that "This Firmware Update Tool is only intended for the AT&T (XX982) D5530 module. It will not work and is not required for other D5530 versions" and "Upgrades AT&T XX982 from 3.6Mbps to 7.2Mbps" - So it seems that the correct 5530 (KM266) will be required for the update!?

Yep!, spotted the Huawei EM772 on their website recently - Seems it will be a winner for notebook manufacturers saving space on their motherboards and hopefully reducing SSP costs by just having just one module instead of two!

Well, they "dispatched" the card towards me, I'm curious how fast it will arrive - hopefully, before the 15-day trial data plan from Orange expires.
I hope I can squeeze a yearly data plan out of my University.

Edit:
I read about the firmware update, users say you actually have to move the DELL card into a DELL machine and update there. Don't know about that. Plus, as you wrote (even in your previous messages, but I probably have ADD or something), the update is useful only for AT&T customers and DELL even warns not to update, for other cases.
On another subtopic - I downloaded the ThinkPad x301 drivers for the Lenovo-branded Ericsson card and it contains both setup32.exe and setup64.exe, so maybe I'm in luck with my x64 Windows 7.

The card arrived, yippee!
Now I have to install it.

Edit: It shows up in Device Manager as "Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard Device", but no driver. Installed the Ericsson driver for it, but no luck - it does not work. Windows says it installed, but it is not working, although now it shows up in Network adapters/Ericsson ... . Will try with a DELL driver.

Edit: Yea, if I could find the 64 bit DELL driver. Not even after installing DELL's download manager (no other way). Will tape pin 20 now and try again.

Edit: Same old, same old. Can't see any difference with pin 20 taped or not. The card shows up in Device Manager, but can't install the driver. By the way, I managed to get the 64 bit DELL driver, but, at some point, it refuses to install, probably because it detects it is not a DELL system.

Edit: Downloaded and installed ThinkVantage GPS - refuses to install, cannot find GPS device or its driver. Also, I ran System Update and Windows Update, but nothing new detected, on the networking front.

Edit: Will try to get Zender's patched BIOS for the x300.

Edit: Contacted Zender, but in the meantime, I managed to start and connect with the card, under Ubuntu 9.04. I'm connected through it right now. The good news: card is functional, BIOS hack not necessary. The bad news: no working driver for Win7 x64 yet and even under Ubuntu, pin 20 must be taped. Interestingly, if pin 20 is not taped, Ubuntu still sees the card and asks for the PIN, but when trying to connect, it tries for a few seconds, then stops trying, without any message. Hm, I just realized I didn't try GPS under Ubuntu, but that's not critical.

Edit: It was a pain to connect the blue auxiliary antenna lead, because it's too long and I had to find space to bend it, but it's ok now. Oh, by the way, I'm downloading with 299 KBps (with capital 'B'), so the hardware does its job. This in an apartment with usually bad 2G/3G signal on the mobile phone (HTC). Currently, Orange hasn't started 7.2 Mbps in our city yet, only 3.6 Mbps. 2.99 Mbps is pretty close to the max - true, it's 3:27 in the morning, so interference and network load is minimal. The Huawei EM160 I mentioned above got 1.44 Mbps, but during daytime.

Edit: This really makes me wonder about the CDMA chipset in the HTC Diamond PDA phone I use - basically, it sucks, if it can't even hold 3G, it the same place where these HSPA modems download with 1.44 Mbps. Will have to try a new radio firmware for it (the seventh, I think).

Edit: I didn't know the x300 had an LED for WWAN. I restarted from Ubuntu to Win7 - the LED is still on, but Windows still can't use the card. At least, I know it's a driver/OS issue.

Edit: It works! Access Connections still doesn't see the card, but DELL's own Wireless Manager utility does. Maybe I'll try changing Access Connections, I read about switching some .dlls. Oh, and ThinkVantage GPS still can't see the "GPS adapter" or its driver, but Wireless Manager can, and shows the NMEA log. Will have to try it in the open.

Basically, I found the drivers and instructions here. Shortened version below.

What I did:
- taped pin 20 and installed the card into the laptop;
- downloaded the drivers from http://usapilot.com/tmp/Dell_5530_GPS.zip and unpacked them;
- downloaded and installed DELL's "Wireless Manager" - DELL_WIRELESS-5530-HSPA-MINI_A00_R198215 from dell.com (start the .exe, it will self-extract and start the setup by itself, after a while);
- set Device Manager to show also hidden devices (instructions in the forum linked above, post 9);
- installed the driver for the "Universal Serial Bus controller" called "Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard Device";
- installed the drivers for the other "Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard xxx" devices;
- restarted Windows;
- started Wireless Manager.

What I struggled with, after finding the drivers, was how to install them. You must install the USB controller sub-device first, otherwise it will be a mess. After you installed the USB part, you don't have to direct Windows to each exact driver folder for each device - I selected the parent folder "x64" and Windows found the corresponding driver in the corresponding subfolder, for each device I told it to.

The good news is that "since the start of this program" (i.e. Edit), the test download varied between 350-420 KBps, strangely faster than under Linux (which has always been faster for me).

Any ideas on how to make Access Connections and ThinkVantage GPS see the card?

Have a good night...er...day!

Managed to get my employer pay for the data plan - 11.9 € / month for 7,2 Mbps downlink (first 6 GB, then fallback to 128 Kbps for unlimited traffic) and 1,46 Mbps uplink. VAT included. Location: Romania. This is a promo for contracts signed until the 31th of August; after that, speeds/caps will return to about half of the above.

I consider this a pretty sweet deal, even if it was paid from my own pocket. Maybe Vodafone has better coverage, but the prices are higher, as well.

Sorry about the rant, but:
1. Although I'm familiar with telecom, it's still rather amazing to experience stable 3 Mbps, from a few blocks distance, inside a concrete building, for affordable prices, plus EDGE speeds in the middle of the woods. WiFi's cool and so are satellite links, but this gives me unprecedented Internet access, even if I used the phone as 3G modem before.
2. Around 2 o'clock in the night, I started to ponder how to find a DELL colleague to sell the card to or sell it online, after seeing it wouldn't work.

Hello,

best way to get the card working with AC would be probably installing Lenovo's drivers. You will have to modify .inf files to use the Dell's card ID instead of Lenovo's, and if you get exclamation mark in device manager afterwards, you also need to modify .sys files. Use PEChksum.exe to fix the .sys file after modification or it won't work.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 70000.html The Vista64bit version of the driver should work for W7. But have not tested myself.

Thank you for the idea.

I installed Lenovo's Ericsson driver, searched for inf files containing "Ericsson" and found them in c:\Program Files (x86)\Ericsson\WirelessModule\ folder. The files in there look like drivers, so I'll try your idea on them.

I can't unzip setup64.exe from the Ericsson driver install package. The internals say it's copyright Macrovision Corporation. Do you happen to know how to unpack an installer like this? The installer itself is i386 32-bit executable.

When you run the installer, grab them from system Temp folder Something like Ericsson Wireless Module Core.msi should be there. And there are programs to extract .msi.

Well, I can't make it work. I'm trying to find the Device ID string in the USB driver INF file, then install it, but it doesn't seem to work. Maybe I don't know what Device ID string to change.

You're right, I found the driver msi, during installation. By the way, it has a cab inside, so I had to unpack that as well.

However, I need help in figuring out what to change, because the online docs about INF file structure are quite complex.

Here's the part I think needs to be changed inside the lnvobus.inf (USB bus driver) file; I believe this is the first to modify and install, then the other sub-devices:
and here's the equivalent from the DELL INF file, which I know works:
If you have any suggestion, please do tell. Thank you.

Edit:
I changed the manufacturer %Ericsson% into %Dell% and devices %LNVO.CdcBus.Desc% into %D553.CdcBus.Desc% in the Lenovo inf file, but still no go (Cannot install driver). I thought the OS would try matching the installed devices' ids (between %s, % being some sort of string wildcard) and, if found, install that inf/driver file for that device. I see now, it's more complicated than that (device enumerator and other kinky stuff).

I think I'll let it be, for now, since it works with DELL's Wireless Manager. It used up a night and half a day of mine plus other people's time, it had its share of dedication

Thank you for your help, Peak2Peak and Zender.

X200, WinXP, Dell5530, modified Bios to bypass Whitelist:
with the Dell GPS drivers mentioned above, and pin20 left as is (not taped)
I got WinXP to recognize "working Properly":
USB controllers: Dell Wireless 5530..Minicard Device
Ports: Dell Wireless 5530..GPS(COM9)

However my Navigation Software does not see a NMEA signal on COM9
Dell Wireless Manager does not install on X200
Sony Ericsson Wireless Manager 5.2 reports :No Mobile Broadband Modem and has no GPS info.
Any ideas how to get at least GPS to work?
Edit:
using Hperterminal:
when connecting to "Dell Wireless5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard Com11"
AT gets OK

when connecting to "Dell..GPS Port(COM9)
AT gets no response

AT+CFUN=1
AT*E2GPSCTL=1,5,1
gets no response

using Nav Program OziExplorer on GPS Com9
gets:
CommState DCB could not be set: Error 87 Flags 4113
Could not Initialize Communications

Edit:
Running Diagnostics on Modem:Dell...Minicard Modem
gives proper modem response

will tape pin next and try

Possible solution 1:
Similar thing happened to me under Linux, with the same card: the OS would see the card, install it and everything went fine, except the actual downloading of data, not one bit.
It never connected, with pin 20 untaped.

Try taping the pin. I'm not sure this would help you, but it did help me.

Possible solution 2:
There was a time when my DELL Wireless Manager simply wouldn't connect, either. What I successfully did was using the card as modem, but I don't remember how. I didn't install anything new, just used the card's other hardware port, the modem one. I think I set up a new connection in Windows, this time through a modem. Remember that when you installed the card's driver, it installed lots of sub-devices. One (two?) of them are modems. Just use one of those, or the virtual network card it installed, or another form of access to the card.

Possible solution 3:
Solution 2 worked for me, but it was asking for the (useless) phone number every time I connected, so I just reinstalled DELL Wireless Manager (maybe the drivers, as well?).

Regarding GPS: I don't think I ever managed to make it work without DELL Wireless Manager, but I didn't really need it. People write that one can activate the port under Linux, but I imagine it still needs a control program - it's not enough to just request data from the port and it will start sending.

haraldnote wrote:X200, WinXP, Dell5530, modified Bios to bypass Whitelist:
with the Dell GPS drivers mentioned above, and pin20 left as is (not taped)
I got WinXP to recognize "working Properly":
USB controllers: Dell Wireless 5530..Minicard Device
Ports: Dell Wireless 5530..GPS(COM9)

However my Navigation Software does not see a NMEA signal on COM9
Dell Wireless Manager does not install on X200
Sony Ericsson Wireless Manager 5.2 reports :No Mobile Broadband Modem and has no GPS info.
Any ideas how to get at least GPS to work?

Personally I'd vote for an F3507g, a bit of Sellotape, and a steady hand.

35 quid gets you a brand new F3507g, FedExed direct from China. The card's already unlocked, so it should be a matter of taping the pin, installing it, popping in your SIM, and logging on.

Now I don't have an X300 (sadly -- I'm looking to trade for one though!), but the above worked just great in my X61s and my X60s.