Thinkpads Forum

I have a T510 and I just bought an Apple-branded Atheros wifi card for use with OS X. Unfortunately, I found that the wifi card slot only fits half-size cards. Thankfully, under a black piece of paper I found a full-size PCIe slot that is supposed to be used for a WWAN card.
Putting the Atheros card into the WWAN slot does nothing, but plugging it into the half-size wifi slot works (though I can't screw it down/put the keyboard back on), so I know the card itself is good (Windows recognizes, installs, and uses it right out of a fresh install, which is more than I can say for the intel card). From more testing, it seems that my known working intel wifilink 1000 card also does not work in the WWAN slot.

Everything is enabled in Security/IO Access in the BIOS, and I know both cards work- What am I missing? Do I need a blank SIM card or something to enable the WWAN PCIe port? It looks and fits like a normal miniPCIe port, so I'm kind of at a loss!

Any ideas? I've read about some whitelist issues, but I've tested plugging the cards in while the computer is on, and the WWAN slot still refuses to work, while the WLAN slot works perfectly (even with the Atheros card).

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. My T510 is the version without switchable graphics, configured with an i7. I am currently running Windows 7 (I nuked my OS X install trying to get the WWAN card working).

Welcome to the forum!

I haven't seen WLAN cards ever work in the WWAN slot.

Here is a solution.

Happy to help.

Brad

Thanks for the reply-
Apparently WLAN card in WWAN slot is a well known solution for bypassing the WLAN card whitelist -> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... #Solutions under 'another safer method'.

Also, that adapter is actually pretty cool, but the WWAN slot is the fullsize one. The larger Atheros card would work if I could cut it down to fit in the half size.

I don't know if they fixed this on the T4x0/T5x0 series or what, but it's a real bummer having to use PDAnet to get an Internet connection in OS X.
If someone has successfully done this, and I'm missing something trivial, that would be awesome. I find it hard to believe that no one with a T5x0 Thinkpad has tried this before.

So! An update! I found a patched BIOS that removes the WLAN/WWAN card whitelist. Flashed it over, taped pin 20, and still nothing. It is almost as if the WWAN slot isn't active/hooked up at all.

Anyone have any ideas?

I apologize that I misunderstood the half to full size component.

I am afraid I don't have any other ideas to offer.

Just to note I have a W510 with a WWAN card that is recognized in the WWAN slot.

Brad

tzfx wrote:T510 ... I found a patched BIOS that removes the WLAN/WWAN card whitelist. ...

Really? Where? It was my impression that these new BIOSs were encrypted, and had not yet been "fixed".

EOMtp wrote:Really? Where? It was my impression that these new BIOSs were encrypted, and had not yet been "fixed".

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... post360390

The guy who does the work on that forum, TTAV134, is a monster- That thread has hundreds of pages and I am pretty sure he's done every request in there. It's 1.41 rather than the newest, 1.44, but it flashed successfully and boots correctly.
Unfortunately, the BIOS flashing software he recommends doesn't come in a Mac OS X flavor, but I was actually able to run it off of, and flash the bios from, a 120MB USB Portable XP "install".


EDIT: Brad- Could you remove your SIM card while the machine is off and see if the card is recognized in Windows? I have a (probably erroneous) theory that the SIM card is the key to activating the WWAN port and being on CDMA/Sprint makes it difficult to test.

Updates! Hooray!
So, never got the WWAN slot working at all (Even with a SIM card in the slot).
The good news is, the BIOS I linked earlier works like a CHARM. When things were looking grim, I went on eBay and bought a AR5B93 Atheros half-size wifi card for $5 and free shipping.

Dropped it in the slot, booted into OS X and the card was automatically recognized and started right up.