Intel 2200BG causes occasional system freezes on R31

[omero72]

Hello

I've just intalled an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG mini PCI card (which was left from a Thinkpad X41) on my Thinkpad R31 Type 2656-MLG Windows Home SP3

AFAIK, its driver is the latest from Intel with version 9.0.4.33 / 08.Feb.2007 and it works quite fine on my WPA2 WiFi (a/b/g) broadcast except that It causes occasional system freezes (I need to press power button for 4-5 secs and reboot)

To alleviate the problem I tinkered with the settings on the advanced tab of the driver settings. For instance I put the Power Save Polling in to Continuously Aware Mode and selected 'only 802.11b' it seemed to ease the problem a bit but occasional system freezes still persist particularly when I open severel tabs in a row on Firefox 44.x or K-Meleon 76.x. It happens mostly when both WiFi traffic and CPU are at high load.

How to get rid of this problem?

Do I need to buy a more suitable / compatible card or may I fix it by some more tinker & tweaking? I have another Wireless card I got from a ZyXel modem with TNETW1130GVF printed on it and it's got Windows XP drivers too but it' has some stability issues. When I search the Thinkwiki I see IBM High Rate Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Adapter with Modem is the official Wireless card for R31, but it's nowhere in sale. So if I ever need to buy a more suitable card which one should it be? If I need to tinker with some more settings what are they? Thank you.

[ajkula66]

Don't bother looking for the original combo card, it wasn't great when new and it's garbage by today's standards.

The best card for older ThinkPads IME:

https://www.amazon.com/TL-WN861N-IEEE-8 ... B0017YHYFM

Having said that, I would never pay $59 for it, just posting this link as a reference so you know what to look for. You might have to apply the "no 1802" hack before installing it.

Good luck.

[omero72]

@ajkula66 Thank you for the quick response. I've found one of those cards you've linked in my country at a quite reasonable price at about $25+$3 shipping. So it seems worth buying and trying I guess.

As for the 1802 business, my R31 never did 1802 when I tried various different cards on it. My Thinkpad R51, X41 and Lenovo N500 however always did 1802 even for slightly different cards.

[ajkula66]

@ajkula66 Thank you for the quick response. I've found one of those cards you've linked in my country at a quite reasonable price at about $25+$3 shipping. So it seems worth buying and trying I guess.

Yes, IMO.

As for the 1802 business, my R31 never did 1802 when I tried various different cards on it.

It's probably been a decade or more since I last toyed with an R31 so you'll have to forgive my imperfect memory...

Now, if the machine starts misbehaving even with this card then I'd venture a guess that there's something wrong with the slot itself or the board in general. Hopefully it won't.

Good luck.

[omero72]

Now, if the machine starts misbehaving even with this card then I'd venture a guess that there's something wrong with the slot itself or the board in general. Hopefully it won't.

Now I've just installed that new TP-Link WN861N card and it's been 1-2 hours browsing web pages, CPU heavy load, etc and no system freezes or hang-ons. It looks like that card is really compatible with this machine. The board or the slot are unlikely to have some defects as this machine were used quite rarely; they are in mint condition actually.

It's probably been a decade or more since I last toyed with an R31 so you'll have to forgive my imperfect memory...

Actually you're correct because everywhere this machine R31 is said to pop up that 1802 thing. But my R31 somehow doesn't do that. It looks like my R31 is an exception.
Now, I'm so pleased with that TL-WN861N card that I consider buying another one for my X41 and then I will have to deal with that 1802 thing

[RealBlackStuff]

Most likely that R31 was 'updated' with Zender's no-whitelist BIOS in the past.
The X41 will need a modded TTAV134-BIOS: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_ ... ified_BIOS

[omero72]

Most likely that R31 was 'updated' with Zender's no-whitelist BIOS in the past.

I've just checked the BIOS version on CPU-Z application and it says:
Brand: IBM
Version: 1FETF1WW (3.110)
Date: 11/16/2004
I did this BIOS upgrade then but it was for a reason other than whitelisting really. For the time being I can't quite remember why I did this upgrade but it might have something to do with the RAM upgrade or for some application to function properly.

The X41 will need a modded TTAV134-BIOS: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_ ... ified_BIOS

Well that R31 had suddenly 300 mbps wifi connection and I've found a real cheap TL-WN861N card in mint condition at about USD 10, shipping included. So I decided to upgrade the X41. Basically I try to avoid BIOS upgrades as much as possible but this time I think I will have to deal with it. So this information will come handy.