T61: upgraded wifi from 4965agn to 5300agn

[miro_gt]

and works awesome.

I've had some wifi issues lately with my card as it was giving me bunch of errors in the event log /system - 5002 and 5005, and after trying couple of different versions drivers I ended up putting new wifi card. I didn't notice the issues that I was having earlier because my laptop was sitting wired most of the time.

anyways, as lenovo whitelists wifi cards that can be used for certain model laptop, I must say big Thanks to middleton for his hacked bios version that I'm using right now, giving me the chance to run Penryn CPU with no "thermal sensor error", running Dual IDA on that CPU as well, using other wifi card, and enabling the full SATA 2 speeds (that I will try some day when I buy me a SSD).

I went with 5300 as this is the last card that can be found with full size of the mini PCI-e and has 3 antennas. For people that have 2 antennas only and want to upgrade wifi card without the effort of adding another antenna - look for 5100 card instead. Of if you insist for the last wifi cards that Intel has to offer then you'll have to use spacer to extend the card to full size so that you can secure it to the laptop chassis, as most new cards come in half size mini PCI-e

me is back to internet-ing without single disconnect so far (second day), and where I am wifi networks are plenty (~15 ATM)

thought I'd share

[JeffCullen]

I actually just did the same, but went to the 6300 using a fleaBay spacer/adapter. My T61p came with a 3945AGN card which was quickly replaced with a Lenovo-FRU 4965AGN. The 2.4GHz band at my apartment is a mess, while 5GHz is mostly wide open... but the 4965AGN couldn't use the 5GHz band in the bedroom, which is the opposite corner of the apartment from where the router must be due to female-imposed aesthetic limitations. This made nighttime surfing in bed quite painful...

I'm happy to report the 6300 has COMPLETELY transformed this experience. I get an easy 50mbps+ down (100mbps cable feed) over 5GHz at around -60dB.

My router is a Netgear WNDR3700v2 running the latest "experimental" Gargoyle (OpenWRT) firmware.

[miro_gt]

tiny card, aint it It was about 40 bux compared to mine that I got for 15 shipped.

now I may have to upgrade my router as it does only 2.4GHz N mode, so I do connect to it at 130MBit/s max. But I doubt it can keep that much if I start utilizing full speed due to the many networks around.

do you happen to know what hardware version your 4965 was? Mine was 1.0.40 and I had issues with it, while the GFs Dell D630 has same card but version 2.0.40 and she's fine with it. It's visible under device manager/wifi/properties

[JeffCullen]

Is the hardware version something I can check on the physical card? In that case, I can look when I get home...

[miro_gt]

does not say on mine, I guess it's only visible when installed.

[JeffCullen]

Rats. Not going to bother re-installing it...

What sort of router do you have now? You can in theory do 300mbps on the 2.4GHz band but in practice it rarely works due to congestion... and earlier 802.11n routers don't support 40MHz channels.

Hmm. I briefly tried a Dell D620 with some Dell-branded card and it was the worst wireless experience I've ever had.

Those D630s are not bad............... for Dells.

Those WD Black drives are really nice. Did your T61 come with the T9500 (CTO?) or did you upgrade?

[miro_gt]

i upgraded the cpu, and proudly running it at 2.8GHz steady on AC . the router is from the first N ones out there - DLink Dir-625. Works fine though.

[TuuS]

i upgraded the cpu, and proudly running it at 2.8GHz steady on AC . the router is from the first N ones out there - DLink Dir-625. Works fine though.

I believe if your running a T9500 that it's 2.6ghz, not 2.8ghz. The X9000 would run at 2.8 (without overclocking), but it's not officially supported on a thinkpad, and even though the X9000 does have an unlocked muliplier, it would require some impressive hacking skills to overclock it on a thinkpad.

I'm going to be building an X9000 T61p unit, mostly as an experiment for educational purposes, but I'd not recommend doing it for everyday use.

[Backslashnl1]

My T9500 sometimes jumps to 2,8 Ghz as well. This feature is called IDA (Intel Dynamic Acceleration (?)). It look attractive but currently useless because the speed jumps to 2.8Ghz only when one core is active while the other is inactive (very rare).

[miro_gt]

I believe if your running a T9500 that it's 2.6ghz, not 2.8ghz. The X9000 would run at 2.8 (without overclocking), but it's not officially supported on a thinkpad, and even though the X9000 does have an unlocked muliplier, it would require some impressive hacking skills to overclock it on a thinkpad.

I'm going to be building an X9000 T61p unit, mostly as an experiment for educational purposes, but I'd not recommend doing it for everyday use.

different topic, but I do run it at 2.8GHz on both cores

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/5452/dualidapost.jpg

and x9000 is no big deal to overclock

[JeffCullen]

I wanted to bring this topic back as I started experiencing strangeness not long after I installed the 6300. During sustained throughput, not even necessarily high-bandwidth (say, watching a HD x.264 movie off of an ethernet-connected Windows server), the system started hard-locking up. Some googling seemed to suggest I was not the only one experiencing this...

I ended up ordering a Lenovo-FRU 5300 card off of fleaBay (why not, was less than $20...) to try that.

This morning I yanked the 6300 and installed the 5300. I haven't done enough testing to report on ultimate performance differences, but so far the system seems rock stable and the 5300 is definitely doing what I want...

One curious thing I've noticed is that running inSSIDer, the original 4965AGN card saw a TON of networks... the 6300 found far fewer, but worked much better -- better SNR handling?? The 5300 seems somewhere in the middle but performance under poor signal conditions on the 5GHz band doesn't seem to be an issue--something the 4965AGN simply couldn't handle. I'm pleased with the setup.

So... avoid the 6300 in these old laptops!

[Tasurinchi]

Interesting... I never had any problems with the 6300 in my X61s, but I never watched HD streamed videos. Will keep an eye on it, thanks for the info!

[Raceboy]

Jeff, are you sure that the 6300 you bought wasn't a defective one? It's always a hit or miss buying a cheap card on eBay as there is many cards there that haven't passed QC for some reason. There are good ones and I guess majority of them are but failure rate is always bigger when end user has to QC the parts and not Lenovo, HP, DELL etc

[JeffCullen]

I actually bought the 6300 from NCIX, a reputable local dealer, not off of fleaBay. I got the 5300 I'm using now off of fleaBay.

Certainly my initial thought was that the 6300 I got is defective, however after googling and finding so many others experiencing precisely the same problem when retrofitting older laptops with the same card, it seemed easier to just buy a 5300 than to try to test my 6300 in another laptop. Would that other laptop have the same distaste for the 6300 my T61p seems to have? If so, I can't use it anyway, so I'm still in the same place I started, etc etc.

The only way I can think of to really test the 6300 is to find a modern laptop with a 6300 in it from the factory, swap the cards, and see what happens... which I can't be bothered to do. If someone wants to make me an offer so they can do just that with my 6300, go nuts...

[RealBlackStuff]

I got two 6200N cards, one in a T61 and one in an X60s.
Both are off fleabay, and both run without any problems at all.
My daughter uses the T61 on her (fully wireless) campus, and the X60s is my travel companion.

[sdrera]

Hi,
I try to put the 5300AGN (pay new ORIGINAL IBM only 12U$) in my T61p (T7500 with 8Gb ram and win8)...
When i lunch win8, the SO find a driver but don't working ... i change (from ISO and CD mode) with the modded bios and reboot ...

RESULT: WORKING PERFECT MODE !!! ... now transmit at 300MBs ... Access connection i must reintall and work perfectly !!! and PC is very speed ...

Now my IBM T61p can FLY at 300MBs ( i use an access point TP-LINK TL-WA901N)

Today i'm very happy.. with only 12 U$ i have the best peformance in my pc.

[Thrakath]

Can anyone comment on power consumption of 4965 vs. 5300 vs. 6300 or is everything simply due to receive/transmit?

[MacAoidh]

I just bought a 6300, awaiting arrival

[MacAoidh]

I just bought a 6300, awaiting arrival

6300 now fitted and seems to be working fine