Thinkpads Forum

To make a long story short:

When swapping my old faulty W510 planar idi@t me manages to break the wlan switch chip when fitting the mg frame. (It's the wlan switch sitting on the planar, not to be confused with the plastic switch on the base cover).

I managed to move it fully to the right before the small plastic switch completely broke off, but any OS will detect it now as switched off. Fn+F5 doesn't work, either any "switch on" function from Linux or Windows.

Any trick to get it on? Or should I start lurking for a new planar

Assuming you have the soldering equipment/skill, find a replacement switch and then swap it with the damaged one on your motherboard. You could take the one off your "faulty" board. If that's not possible, then the next-best thing to try would be to short out the appropriate pads to make the motherboard think that there's a switch present (albeit, always in the ON position). This requires some homework: knowing the type of switch contacts being used; having the circuit schematics would be helpful.

Or you could start lurking .

Thanks Ray for the hints, by coincidence a fellow Thinkpadder from the German sister forum was here and told me a similar story. Hopefully we can sort it out in the next weeks...