Thinkpads Forum

I've been trying to find any help possible on how to install wireless antennas in a TP 600x and what I've gathered is that the better choice for wireless is either a modification to acomodate an external antenna or a simple pcmcia adapter. Has anybody installed internal antennas and got a fair good signal?

Like this?

The internal antenna (only one) that I installed inside the lid of a 600X does not come close at all to the range offered by even a PCMCIA wireless card. The metal surrounding the LCD and possibly even the carbon-fiber lid appears to limit the reception so that if I'm on the other side of my house from the AP, this 600X has a hard time locking onto it. A 600X using a PCMCIA card has no problems.

I haven't opened up a 600X in some time so I don't remember where/if there's any room to place an antenna under the palmrest, but I'd opt to try that location first, instead of dealing with routing the wire up into the lid. cmarti's picture shows a similar mod that I did awhile back after finding out that lid antenna didn't work any better than what I was already using. An added benefit for an external antenna connector is that you can use ANYTHING that you want (small whip, larger whip, "cantenna", even a parabolic). Of course it takes some time and effort to accomplish this.

The simplest thing to do is just get a cheap PCMCIA card. If you are the adventurous type and can deal with losing the built-in 56K modem, then you can plug in most any MiniPCI card that's 1.9" or less in height. I cannot recommend using the ActionTec modem/wireless combo card that comes out of a T23. It physically will not fit without some trimming of the 600X compartment and it appears that the modem will not work anyway. Most of the recent Broadcom BCM94306MP cards will not fit easily since they are 2" tall. The ones that I've used for the 600X are 1.8" (45mm) high and fit fine.

when stripping the paint off a 600 palmrest for repainting i saw that it has a metallic coating and it also looks like they went to some effort to ground this to the system board to act as some kind of shield. so IMO this would be a lousy place to put an antenna as the only space would be between this shield and large chunks of grounded metal like the HDD, battery and optical drive. might be OK if you put the antennas as close to the edges as possible like where the latches are.

while the antenna mod shown in the above pic is cool i agree that the easy way out is simply to use a PCMCIA card and be done with it. and since my machine is the plain 600 i have no PCI slot anyways. now if only i could get the card i have to work...



dave

I don't know if this is relevant to Zag's problem.
You might have a connection problem with the PCMCIA slot.
On my first 600 (I was/am) using a Dlink DWL650 (at first a + now just a plain 650) Sometimes the card would not work in one of the PCMCIA slots - this would happen if I had removed the card and replace it. I would have to go through the re insertion process (into a different slot occasionally I would have to re install the driver software).
Other times it would function normally.

If you have a Dlink make sure it wasn't flashed with the wrong upgrade - they had several versions of the card - different external antenna.
Oh and on those units I was using ....... Window Me.

ChefJohn wrote:I don't know if this is relevant to Zag's problem.
You might have a connection problem with the PCMCIA slot.
On my first 600 (I was/am) using a Dlink DWL650 (at first a + now just a plain 650) Sometimes the card would not work in one of the PCMCIA slots - this would happen if I had removed the card and replace it. I would have to go through the re insertion process (into a different slot occasionally I would have to re install the driver software).
Other times it would function normally.

If you have a Dlink make sure it wasn't flashed with the wrong upgrade - they had several versions of the card - different external antenna.
Oh and on those units I was using ....... Window Me.

this also the d-link DWL-G650. works fine in my T30 with win2k but on the 600 with win98 i can't even get the software application to open up after installation. not too concerned as i have yet to even try reinstalling it or anything else.

sorry for the thread hijack...



dave