Broadcom BCM943222 and BCM43222 802.11n WiFi cards for T4x

[dandreye]

Hi All,

Has anyone tried either of these in a T4x, particularly running Win7? Any good?
https://s24.postimg.org/oqghn2651/Broad ... e_Band.jpg
https://s27.postimg.org/5omk1dxo3/Broad ... l_Band.jpg

As follows from these pictures, BCM943222 is single band while BCM43222 is dual band.

The link to the product page at Broadcom site is broken and I can't find any info on them anywhere at all:
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Wirele ... ns/BCM4322

One seller on Ebay claims BCM943222 won't work in HP/Lenovo laptops but is unable to supply any details why exactly.

I'm aware that TP-LINK TL-WN861N is probably the best 802.11n option for T4x but these Broadcom ones are almost twice cheaper (at least the single band one is) and besides T42 and T43 I could also try it in my equally old Asus laptop even if it doesn't work in T42/T43.

[RealBlackStuff]

Never tried those Broadcoms, since TP-Link was (at least earlier on) available at a decent price.
In the T42/R51 and lower/older you need to run NO-1802 to bypass the BIOS-whitelist.
In T43/R52 and higher you need a modded BIOS with whitelist removed.
Most eBay sellers have no idea about 1802 and/or whitelist.

[dandreye]

Never tried those Broadcoms, since TP-Link was (at least earlier on) available at a decent price.
In the T42/R51 and lower/older you need to run NO-1802 to bypass the BIOS-whitelist.
In T43/R52 and higher you need a modded BIOS with whitelist removed.
Most eBay sellers have no idea about 1802 and/or whitelist.

All of my ThinkPads are no-1802 already: TTAV134 BIOS on T42 and T43, Serg008 BIOS on X60s and Middleton BIOS on all X61s's, so non-whitelisted cards are not a concern. That seller probably said that with WiFi card whitelist in mind indeed. I've already found what looks like a W7 driver for the dual band one:
"Supported Operating Systems
Windows 7, Windows 7 (64 bit), Windows 2008, Windows 2008 (64 bit), Windows Vista, Windows Vista (64 bit), Windows 2003, Windows 2003 (64 bit), Windows XP, Windows XP (64 bit)"
http://www.driverguide.com/driver/detai ... id=1866323

Will wait a few more days in case someone reports any issues and if not will probably be the 1st one to test it. Single band ones are just over $4 at AliExpress, almost twice cheaper than TP-LINK ones.

[ajkula66]

Hi All,

Has anyone tried either of these in a T4x, particularly running Win7? Any good?

I haven't for the following reasons:

a) I was never too keen on Broadcom chips - going back to T23/T30 days - and

b) Their support in *nix environment is next to non-existent, which is a reasonably big deal for silly old me

My understanding is that the dual-band card you're interested in works OK in W7 environment, at least that's what I've been told by someone who tried one in an R52, Obviously, YMMV.

[dandreye]

Thanks George: it was >15 years ago when I had a (corporate) T2x for a while, so can hardly remember anything at all about it. In fact if there were any WiFi issues I'd probably remember that as I would've been unable to work normally. No idea which WiFi card make it was though. Issues with Linux would be a bit of a pain as I occasionally boot up from a CloneZilla Live USB key to make a snapshot of my laptops and so would have to use cable then. I might still try it at this incredibly low pricing though: a pint of good beer costs more here )

Update: apparently there are some other 802.11n mPCI cards based on the same Broadcom chip(s), e.g. Actiontec 802MBN. Besides those there are also Atheros AR9223 chip based ones, e.g. Alpha WMP-N09 and Proware PW-MN561, the latter one reportedly supported by Linux too:
http://www.proware.com.cn/product-detai ... Id=1010044
Interestingly here this PW-MN561 shows up as a clone of TP-LINK TL-WN861N v2:
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Proware_PW-MN561_v2

I'll likely end up buying a few different ones just for the sake (and fun) of testing.

[dandreye]

Results so far:

A single-band 2.4GHz BCM4322-based card Actiontec 802MBN was purchased as it was the cheapest one I found, which was kind of a goal:
https://s29.postimg.org/qmzzajjw7/Actiontec_802_MBN.jpg
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-PC-Ne ... 54222.html

Similarly to TP-LINK TL-WN861N, the card is about 8mm taller than standard one, so I had to put a piece of Kapton tape over the cable connectors to prevent contact with metal parts of the UltraNav in the palmrest.

Its HW IDs are PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_432B, shared with a few Broadcom cards:
https://s23.postimg.org/ddim2yzyj/Device_HW_IDs.png

W7 recognized it straight away as Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter and installed some old driver version 4.x, with which there was no WiFi at all (signal strength bars would remain gray and crossed red). With some newer driver version 5.x I tried next the issue went away. I eventually settled on 6.34.223.5 dated 4 Sep 2014 from package http://www.driverscape.com/files/2014/w ... 5_whql.zip, which seems to be the most recent one compatible with W7 (a few even newer ones are reportedly for W8 and up - they won't install on W7):
https://s27.postimg.org/4e6f39t37/Devic ... etails.png

So far so good: connecting to the router at 144̶M̶b̶p̶s̶ 300Mbps now (see update below), same as on my X1 with Intel Advanced-N 6205 inside. Got 3-fold Internet speed boost: now getting 60Mbps down compared to 20Mbps with Intel 2915abg, both measured using speedtest.net over my 70-75Mbps broadband (perhaps direct downloads from another PC on the LAN would show a higher speed). WiFi LED obviously doesn't work while Fn+F5 surprisingly does:
https://s29.postimg.org/u5ghmbmdj/Fn_F5.png

Now I'm also keen on experimenting with some Atheros chipset based cards. The TP-LINK TL-WN861N I was watching earlier was gone fairly quickly - it was HW v1 though (AR5008-2NG/AR5416/AR2122). Are HW v2 ones (AR9223-based) any better at all? What link speeds and effective throughput are you getting with your v1 and v2 cards anyway?

Update: just found the parameter (20/40MHz channel BW, set to 20MHz by default) to enable speeds above 150Mbps on 802.11n and now connecting to the router at 300Mbps:
https://s29.postimg.org/iivlgqppz/300_M ... 02_MBN.png