X130e wwan issue

[NihmX]

The Good:
I recently picked up a refurb X130e, and all in all it's fantastic, it's headed to Africa with me for a year, and I have every expectation it will be perfect for that. I swapped in a 128g SSD, another 4g of ram, and it's set.
The Bad:
I also ordered an ericsson f5521gw from amazon. I was aware of the whitelist problem, and I thought I got the right one. Seeing as how lenovo no longer sells the ericsson unit, and I wanted an unlocked one... you get the idea.

so, error 1802 pops up, telling me I have the wrong card. after a ton of googling, it seems there are 3.5 options:
option .5; I have seen it referenced that to can modify the firmware on the card so that it matches the whitelist, though I'm not sure if that's true since I have found nothing on how to do it.

option 1: I have read that taping/covering pin 20 stops the bios check from occurring, and allowing the card. how reliable is this? are there other consequences from doing this?

option 2: resell the card, and try to buy one that is on the whitelist. possible, possibly expensive, and not a sure thing. And since I'm leaving in about 3 weeks, I dont have a lot of time to dick around with it, but if I could find one that I was sure of, it might be the simplest solution

option 3: flash the bios. I have never done this before, and am hesitant to learn my accidentally bricking my laptop, which I don't have the money to replace 3 weeks before I head off to a third world country for a year.

Worse comes to worse, I will leave without resolving it, but I would really like the flexibility of having both wwan and wlan since in many places where I'm going cell coverage is better than the internet, which seems to run at sub-dial-up speeds for the guy I am replacing.
I know this topic has been covered a lot, for a lot of different models, and I apologize if this seems like it's just rehashing an old problem, but I'm more looking for advice on this situation than step by step instructions.
Thank you in advance, this has been a great forum for helping me find the right computer to take in the first place!

[mikemex]

If you can't afford to brick it I would discard trying flashing a whitelist BIOS. I don't think the risk is high but something may happen...

Tapping the 20 pin worked for older models but I'm not sure it still does. However, it seems like the first thing to do since you have already the WWAN card. It's very unlikely that something wrong will happen. I'd use nail lacquer.

If it doesn't work, you can always get one with the right FRU and sell the other.

[NihmX]

Thank you! I will try the nail polish first, and if that works I will let you know. if not, looks like I'm going shopping!

[NihmX]

just an update for you all:
I tried covering pin20, which did not work, i still would not boot with the card installed.
I called Lenovo to see if they had a card that would work for me, and the short answer is no.
Apparently in the American market I cannot get an unlocked card that is compatible with my laptop. bummer. I will continue looking around, and if anything comes up I will post it here.