T30 Bluetooth & Wireless

[mangus580]

I have done a search on this, but looking for a definitive answer. I would like to add bluetooth & wireless to my T30. I have the 'Main' and 'Aux' wires in mine, but no wireless or bluetooth. I do not have the bluetooth button. I would like to have the best coverage possible for the wireless, so I am thinking it best to use both antennas on a wifi card. Basically, I am looking for suggestions of what to use for both the wifi and bluetooth cards. I have seen the popular ebay seller (who posts here) selling the bluetooth cards. I suspect his are the way to go, but I need to know what to purchase. Also, I would like an A/B/G wifi card. Any tips as to what to get here?

I am actually considering outfitting both mine and my wife's laptops with this.

thanks

[ppotz]

I've done this upgrade on my T30; but it's not for the faint of heart.

I won't speak to the wireless upgrade - because there are plenty of other posts on that subject on this board - other than to say that I went with an IBM/Cisco 802.11b card because I was looking for some additional convenience and not necessarily speed.

As for the Bluetooth upgrade, I bought the BMDC200 (Bluetooth and modem card) from the ebay seller you mentioned. Installation involved nearly complete dissambly of the unit. Fortunately, the guidance from the IBM manuals is top-notch. (If only I wasn't cursed with such fat fingers!) If you do not already have a Bluetooth antenna, you will need to get the appropriate bluetooth louver (46P3042 or 46L4927 ... Google up "T20 Bluetooth Louver"). Personally, after having seen the inside of my T30, I wouldn't want to try and route any other wires/cables anywhere the engineers hadn't already allotted the space.

My T30 does not have the bluetooth button either - but I simply downloaded the "ezykey" utility and found the "FN+F5" utility. I placed a shortcut to it on my desktop and use it to start the wireless radio controls from the IBM Access Connections application. A simple click of the appropriate button turns the card on and off. This is OK for Windows - but I'm still working on the Linux solution.

Be sure to download the correct Widcomm drivers from the IBM web site ... for the BMDC200 card, I eventually wound up using the bthwxp1o.exe file from the T40. The T30 drivers didn't work properly for me. On the subject of installation of the appropriate drivers, there is tons of information available on the net - believe me, I've looked at most of it.

So ... in the end ... was the time, effort, trouble and hassle worth it? Well ... my Bluetooth GPS keeps me from getting lost ... and my Bluetooth mouse is a delight to use (especially since I dont have to sacrifice one of the precious USB ports to go wireless mousing). Next up? a Bluetooth keyboard ... and maybe a nice Bluetooth stereo headset - once I can confirm that the aveLink drivers will not screw up the Widcomm stack and still give me A2DP and AVRCP functionality (for a Bluetake I have my eye on).

Cheers!