Thinkpads Forum

I bought a Lenovo WWAN card - Ericsson F5521gw (0A36186); when I installed the card I have found that instead of two WWAN antenna wires (orange and blue) there is only one WWAN antenna wire (the orange one). I have connected it to the MAIN connector (orange triangle) on the WWAN card - and it seems that it works fine (it connects at 21Mb/HSPA+ - though I have not passed yet over 7Mbps download). As you can see in this picture, there are four wires underneath of the laptop: grey, white, black (these three wires are for the WLAN card, the white one being unused because of my 2x2 Intel 6205 WLAN card) and orange (the one I connected to the WWAN card).

So, should I worry for the missing blue wire? Could someone else confirm that there is no blue wire in other T420s laptop or it's just mine? Thanks!

I have took off the keyboard and I found the blue wire! It comes from the right side of screen and goes underneath of the laptop but being too short and having its end covered with some black material it wasn't obvious that it was there. If you look carefully at the picture you can even see a shade of blue - that is the blue wire. So, I have the blue wire but I can't use it, it's ~2 inches shorter. This is really poor craftsmanship. Now I'm thinking what to do: search for a pigtail (u.fl female to u.fl male - looks like the connector is u.fl, hope I'm not wrong) to prolong the wire to the WWAN card or send the laptop to the service shop (hope Lenovo will fix this)..

AIX wrote:... blue wire! ... it's ~2 inches short ...

These antenna wires are "standard" lengths for the given Thinkpad, and it virtually impossible for a wire to be too short. A loop is probably caught somewhere. Trace the wire, and you will find the missing length.

AIX wrote:This is really poor craftsmanship.

Not so. The cable length is perfect. Make sure you're following the HMM (Hardware Maintenance Manual) here: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/guides- ... MIGR-77103

PDF reader pages 80 - 85, 92, 95, 96 discuss the blue AUX WWAN wire and provide a couple of "somewhat" helpful diagrams on cable routing.

Note that printed page number 80 corresponds to PDF reader page 86, etc.

As mentioned above, it's very easy for a cable to get caught up on something especially when a bunch of them are looping through together (in a tight squeeze) to the back of the laptop.

I like this kind of design. I so much prefer the location of the WWAN and WLAN cards in a compartment on the back versus underneath the keyboard. So much easier to access.

Daniel.

Both of you are probably right; unfortunately I didn't find any (blue) wire loop underneath the laptop (I too like the compartment of memory, WLAN and WWAN cards on T420s) or under the keyboard - and believe me, I wish I found.. If there is a loop it has to be under the LCD bezel assembly - which I'm not sure I can remove myself.

I went to a IBM Partner service shop for Lenovo Thinkpads this morning, the guy who took my case was very quick in verifying the laptop, he checked inside the laptop and took off the LCD bezel assembly but unfortunately there is no wire loop nowhere in the path of the blue wire - it is simply just too short. He told me that he will order a new part (antenna kit) and will replace it.

Problem solved - the service shop replaced the antenna kit with a new part today (they called last Friday to tell me that they have the new part). The tech guy told me that he did found a (hidden) blue wire loop in the right hinge area when he disassembled all the required parts to uninstall the antenna - and the wire was a little "stressed" too. Now it's fine. This is the first time asking for ThinkPad service support since I have started using ThinkPads laptops (9 or 10 years ago).