Help Me Choose Between Two Wireless Cards

[ArtShapiro]

In recent weeks, my X61 has had some wireless connectivity issues - frequent disconnects and a far weaker signal than any of my other Thinkpads. It seems a reasonable troubleshooting issue to replace the wireless card.

Meanwhile, both of my badly-overheating T60p machines, which I've written about several times in the appropriate forum, have finally cooked themselves to death with fatal beep codes. I'm secretly pleased, because dealing with them mean hours of hassle for routine stuff like updating virus defs. I even had to do the last Windows 10 update by putting one of them in my freezer.

So I've taken the two wireless cards out of the two dead machines, and want to try one in the X61 (assuming it has only two antenna leads.) One of them is an Anatel Atheros ar5bxb6, and the other is an Intel WM3945ABG.

By any miracle can anyone assert whether one of these is in some sense a better choice than the other? Or are they merely peas in the proverbial pod?

Art

[RealBlackStuff]

The 3945 is arguably the worst wifi card ever made for that series.The Atheros should be way better.
Even better again is a half-size Intel 6200N with half-size adapter, as shown all over the X61 forum.

[theterminator93]

Agreed. I have a 3945 in my T60 and it drops connections constantly under some conditions where other cards have no issue.

[ArtShapiro]

Thanks guys - it turned out to have an Atheros in it, so I swapped in that same unit. It seems to be showing a 54 MB connection, whereas the other card was frequently showing as low as 12.

Alas, I managed to break off the right mouse button while taking out the keyboard. Haven't screwed up a removal in quite a while - guess I was due!

The machine is used rather infrequently, due to that wretched XGA resolution, so I'm probably not going to go out of my way to search for a 6400N card and adapter, although I'll keep it in mind if one happens to make itself available.

Art