Network Card Conundrum

[gicos73]

I'm unable to get a Azurewave AW-CE123H to work on my X61. I know others have had success, but no love for me so far. The BIOS is Middleton, so that's not the issue. I tried it in both the WWAN and WLAN slots with the same result (nothing detected). The computer wasn't originally a WWAN model, but the slot is there. Everything's enabled in the BIOS. The WLAN works fine in the WLAN slot. Booted from several different Linux distros that almost certainly have the driver module available (the card checks out as green and included in the main kernel source). I actually have 3 of the cards and tried multiples, so highly unlikely the card is the problem. A few things I noted, but hope to get more info on:

I'm pretty sure it's got a BT card. There's an LED for it. Could this be messing with the Azure card? I haven't pulled the LCD cover yet until I know more.

The pins are definitely different on the half mini pcie card than the original (some missing, some joined, etc.). I'm using a simple metal extender, not the fancy twenty dollar jobs. Is there some kind of pin conversion going on with the high dollar ones? I was going to try the pin 20 mod, but pin 18 and 20 are joined in this newer configuration.

Is it possible the WWAN slot just isn't enabled since it wasn't a WWAN model? It would seem odd for Lenovo to disable the port, but I guess stranger things have been done.

Thanks for any insight.

[jaspen-meyer]

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/AzureWave_AW-CE123H

'broadcom-wl' is not included out of the box on Ubuntu. The link above includes a PPA where you could get the package, or built it yourself.