X200 & Verizon Wireless EVDO – Mod For External Antenna?

[ckalid]

Has anyone who uses the X200’s integrated EVDO (Qualcomm 9202 card) ever explored the idea of installing an external antenna jack?

The built-in antenna is just fine 90% of the time, but as luck would have it, my office in the Financial District is the one and only place in New York City where I don’t get a strong EVDO signal.

I’ve considered simply using an Air Card in the PCMCIA slot , but there’s 2 problems with that; 1) The primary reason I chose this model is because it comes with integrated EVDO and 2) In the BIOS if you disable the EVDO card, you also disable the 802.11.

The service manual defines the pin-out of the wireless card(s) pretty succinctly, so I’d imagine the mod would involve soldering insulated wire to 1 or 2 of the contacts and installing a jack on the case where there’s some available real estate.

Any advice, pointers or references would be most appreciated.

CK

[yak]

The WWAN card is a Mini PCI-Express Card. The antenna is connected directly to the card using a special coaxial connector, the card's edge connector is not used for antenna.

I don't know enough about antennas to say how could you provide an external connector and keep the internal antenna functional at the same time. Simply splitting the cable sounds too easy to me.