Thoughts about the X200's expansions slots

[defor]

I've been interested in the massive expansion potential of the X200's chassis since the day I ordered it...
3 PCI-enabled Mini-PCI Express slots- pretty fantastic.

Anyhow- my outlet order supplied me with a system equipped with Ericsson WWAN, ThinkPad 802.11b/g, and an empty slot...

Recently I've been thinking of replacing the extra slot with something.. Finally disassembled the system and found the following:

1 half-length slot (reserved for Turbo Memory or Wireless USB)
1 full-length slot (had the WWAN card in it)
1 dual-length slot (had a half-length 802.11b/g card in it)

After some experimentation- this is what I've uncovered:

The half-length slot has a proper PCI bus (surprising given its limited number of intended uses), BUT the external Wireless switch does NOT control power to it.
The full length slot has both access to the SIM card holder and the Wireless switch, and PCI
The dual length slot has PCI and access to the Wireless switch, BUT the standoffs for using a half-length card prevent one from installing a double-sided full-length card

Now, while a Lenovo Wifi card will operate in both of the primary slots, I was interested in freeing up a slot for another Full-length device (bios mod will eventually be necessary). Upon inserting the card into the half-length slot, The system found it, and configured it, but it was always set to off.
This issue is caused by the bios recognizing a lack of connection to the wireless switch, thus disabling it on Pin 20.
I attempted to use a custom bios, but to no avail- Zender's bios mods only deal with the whitelisting (which in the case of an original card was not a problem), and not with the wireless switch soft-disable.
Taping the pin, however, and using stock bios, worked perfectly, with the only downside being a lack of LED while powered up.
The Fn-F5 panel will also properly turn off the card, BUT the side switch will only turn off the devices on the Main 2 slots- amusingly (but not surprisingly) even though the Fn-F5 panel shows "all devices are off", Wifi continues to work, as this switch seems to be directly controlling the device power off via pin 20, while the FN-F5 panel is controlling it via a more indirect software method which will actually turn off the cards individually.

I'm already expecting to need to go back to a custom bios to install a non-Lenovo device in my now-freed up slot, but as turbo memory and wireless usb were worthless options, and a half-length 802.11n card exists, this option has been working great for me, fully supported by the lenovo utilities and so on.

[bcherry]

Thanks for sharing. very interesting. Would it be possible/practical to fit a PCI-E SSD like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820220358 the 64gb Patriot in the dual length slot and move the WLAN to the full length? It seems that then the wireless switch would always need to left in the ON position.

[defor]

Well, as a followup, here's what I've found:
USB devices work fine
PCI devices work fine
SATA (I don't have any card devices to try at the moment)

USB devices seem to be independent of both the wireless switch control, and the BIOS hardware checks.
I'd expect SATA to be the same.