X21 + wireless miniPCI = high CPU temp.

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mortodifame · #1 Post by **mortodifame** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 8:35 pm

Hi All,

I have a couple of old thinkpads (X21, A20P) into which I wanted to install wifi wireless cards. I recently installed an Intel 2100-3B card into the X21 and all worked well. However, I noticed that the fan came on very quickly and stayed on. Using MobileMeter, I found out that the X21's CPU was at 59C, when idling (speedstep on). I thought this was strange since the fan rarely came on before. I put the Intel Pro SP ethernet card back in and checked the temp. The CPU returned to 39C, when idling. Put the wireless card back in, and the temp went back up to 59C. The weird thing is that Task Manager reports 1% CPU utilization in both cases. Disabling the card thru Device Manager did not lower the temp. I also tried an ActionTec wireless card with the same results, and the A20P exhibited the same isue.

Anybody have any ideas as to what's going on?

aaa · #2 Post by **aaa** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:00 pm

In the Performance Monitor (perfmon.msc), there's a graph for processor C3 sleep state. I'm guessing if the driver keeps the processor from getting a high percentage of sleep, the temperature would rise.

I've just realized that you disabled it in Device Manager, so that theory's probably already out the window...

phool@round · #3 Post by **phool@round** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:10 pm

Any chance that the radio is still on? Might be a power issue and not a cpu cycles issue.

mortodifame · #4 Post by **mortodifame** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 4:20 pm

@ phool@round: The radio is off.

Last night I re-loaded a clean copy of XP into the X21 just to see if that made any difference. After I booted XP, I realized that the OS image I installed didn't have the wireless card's driver, so, of course, the Found New Hardware Wizard came up. I went to get the driver from a different pc and when I came back, I noticed that the fan was going. I checked the temp, and it was 58C. This card increases the CPU temp even if its driver isn't loaded! This is truly bizarre!

phool@round, when you mentioned a power issue, what did you mean?

phool@round · #5 Post by **phool@round** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 5:38 pm

Just a hunch. There's only one wireless "card" supported by the X21 and it's a PCMCIA. The other wireless device listed is an access point. I'm referring to the tawbook. The BIOS doesn't natively support the internal Mini-PCI card.

Does the BIOS report the MAC address? Did you have to apply the 1802 patch?

If the processor cycles are not up but the heat is I think circuit resistance right off. It's possible that the card is drawing more mA than the power circuit knows how to process. Do you have *all* of the Lenovo drivers installed for the X21? What level is the BIOS at?

mortodifame · #6 Post by **mortodifame** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 9:28 pm

The BIOS does not report the MAC address, 'Not Applicable' is displayed. The BIOS and Embedded Controller versions are the latest, v2.25 and v1.36 respectively. I did not have to install the 1802 patch since the BIOS gave no message regarding the incompatibility of the card in the miniPCI slot. I do have all the device drivers loaded, but I did not install some of the utilities, like Access Connections, Configuration Utility, and Software Installer. The power management driver and utilities are installed.

You could be right, in that the wireless card may be drawing to much current, but you'd think the power supply circuitry would complain in some way if it was being overloaded.

I hadn't noticed that the BIOS didn't show the MAC address. Is it possible that the wireless card is not getting some required initialization from the BIOS. On the other hand, both wireless cards that I tried work perfectly otherwise.

phool@round · #7 Post by **phool@round** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:32 am

We are now thinking alike, great follow-up. The 1802 patch is not needed, only if your getting the unauthorized ethernet card warning while booting. The X21 is an older system and not effected by the white list.

The power circuit in the X20/21 isn't as sophisticated as the X22-24. Combine that with an unrecognized device and it might lead to the heat issue. I say might because I don't have a way of checking the voltage pre and post install.

Have you noticed a drain on your battery with the card installed?

mortodifame · #8 Post by **mortodifame** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:45 am

Thanks for the follow-up suggestions. I used the Battery Information function of the ThinkPad Configuration utility to determine the following current draws: (while the X21 was idling)

mini-PCI empty : 0.75 A
Intel PRO SP ethernet: 0.80 A
Intel 2100 wireless: 1.51 A

So, the wireless card is causing an additional 0.75 A draw from the battery. Now, if the wireless card itself was drawing the 0.75 A, at 12V, that's like 9 Watts, you'd think the card would get a little warm, but it doesn't, it's completely cold to the touch, both sides. The only component affected seems to be the CPU, it does get quite hot.

Is it possible that the card is not being initialized properly and causing extra CPU cycles thru interrupts, non-DMA transfers, etc., that Windows is not detecting and therefore not reporting in Task Manager?

phool@round · #9 Post by **phool@round** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:26 pm

mortodifame, I've asked someone to come by to take a look at this thread because this is interesting behavior. He's done a little more in the wireless mods than I have. Very interesting. I for one would like to do the same with my X21 and I'm sure others would be interested if this issue can be overcome.

#10 Post by **rkawakami** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:41 pm

You rang????

Sounds like a very interesting problem which has definitely been isolated to the MiniPCI wireless card with some great detective work. Unfortunately I have never seen this behavior with any of the wireless mods I've done to 600X or T23 systems. I have only used the stock modem/wireless combo cards or a Broadcom-based one.

I don't have an X21 to play around with but I can try the same thing with a couple of X22s; one of them does have the factory wireless option in it. That is probably going to be comparing apples with oranges so I'm not sure how helpful that will be.

phool@round · #11 Post by **phool@round** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:18 pm

Thanks for stopping by Ray! I think we're lacking control of the card at the BIOS level. Anyone know of a hex editor for a Phoenix BIOS?

#12 Post by **gator** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:30 pm

mortodifame · #13 Post by **mortodifame** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 5:48 pm

Thanks for the interest guys, I really appreciate it. I've run a couple of more tests, and I though you may find the results useful...

1) I wanted to make sure that I didn't have a flaky wireless card, so I installed it into my main machine, an R40. The 2100 worked perfectly in the R40. It only added a few milliamps to the current draw of the R40.
2) I installed a Xircom miniPCI combo card, from the A20P, into the X21. Since the Xircom is not on the list of ethernet cards available for the X21, according to the Lenovo site, I wanted to see how the X21 BIOS would work with an unapproved card. The Xircom worked perfectly in the X21, with very little additional current draw.

I'm wondering...are the BIOSs in the ThinkPads, or maybe laptops in general, designed specifically to only support certain, approved mini-PCI cards?

phool@round · #14 Post by **phool@round** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:05 pm

I refer you to this page; http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~mjg59/thinkpad/wireless.html

...and to this page; http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... twork_card

#15 Post by **rkawakami** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:26 pm

Okay, here's some preliminary data on a X22 with factory wireless...

All power measurements taken with MobileMeter with the X22 on battery only:

- with the factory ActionTec 12P3657 combo card, power was 14.4W when downloading a file in Firefox and 12.1W when idle (after the 3 minute timeout for the disk drive).
- pulling out the combo card, the power dropped down to 10.9W at idle. This seems to say that the combo card draws 1.2W. However, turning off the radio with the wireless utility program only resulted in about a 0.3W lowering of power.
- installing one of my Broadcom 802.11b/g cards, the power was 14.3W with a Firefox download and 12.8W at idle. Disabling the Broadcom radio via the wireless utility program yielded a similar 0.2 to 0.3W drop.

System temperatures were in the range of 38c to 45c both with and without any wireless cards installed. I did notice that the X22 had the fan running almost all of the time, something I did not really recall before fooling around with the wireless system. I rolled back using System Restore to a point prior to when I installed the drivers and utility program for the Broadcom card and the fan was still spinning all of the time and maintaining a semi-constant CPU temp of 45-50C with 1-2% of system resources being consumed. I was recharging the battery at that time but I wouldn't think that the CPU temp is affected by that.

As to your question about approved MiniPCI cards... I'm not sure about the X2x series. Since I only use Broadcom BCM94306 cards and have installed them with no problems in 600X and T2xs (and now an X22) without any regard to BIOS revisions, Certainly with newer systems there is a white list of supported cards and you know right away that there's a problem since you get a boot warning. Basically the reasons I have chosen to use the Broadcom card is that they are 802.11b/g, I easily found a driver and configuration program that works, it operates with NetStumbler, I don't really mind losing the built-in modem capability and they're fairly cheap in quantity.

Again, this may not be a valid test since the X22 was designed to support wireless while as far as I know, the X21 was not. The only other X2 system I have besides the 22s is a wireless X24 but that's probably even a worse comparison to attempt. With your test of the Xircom card I'd say stick with that one.

P.S. Forgot to include this... AFAIK, the BIOS only reports the ethernet MAC address. It does not see the wireless card if there is one. This is what I remember when playing around with a T23 that didn't have the ethernet CDC but did have a MiniPCI wireless card.

edit: Corrected Broadcom part number to BCM94306 (was BCM93406)

Terrahawk · #16 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 6:57 am

You know, I have the exact same issue with my X21 with a Sierra Wireless Aircard 580 PCMCIA EV-DO card. As soon as I insert the card, the CPU no longer enters the ACPI C3 state and it is not until I eject the device using the Windows XP eject icon that the CPU temperature goes down and the CPU is able to enter the C3 state again.

I wonder what the common element is. The side effect of this is while I am using the Aircard, my battery life is halved.

mortodifame · #17 Post by **mortodifame** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 6:23 pm

I just tried a DLink DWL-650+ PCMCIA wireless card in the X21. Again it worked perfectly. This time the CPU temp remained pretty steady between 39C and 41C, and the fan did not come on. However, the current draw increased substantially from 0.8 A to 1.25A. Disabling the card in Device Manager (I couldn't find a way to turn off just the radio) reduced the current draw to about 0.9 A. After about 10 minutes of operation, I took the card out and it was warm to the touch. This card, which is quite old, probably 5 or 6 years old, worked well but it draws a lot of current.

As a comparison, I also tried a 3COM 3CXFE575BT PCMCIA ethernet card just for the heck of it. This card barely increased the current draw at all, to between 0.8A and 0.85A, and the CPU temp remained at 39C.

weepy · #18 Post by **weepy** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:40 am

I didn't read all posts in detail, but my idea is that it simply blocks some airflow or heats up so much that it increases the cpu temp. Or it might be the VRs. Anyway, I wouldn't run the rig in these conditions..

Raceboy · #19 Post by **Raceboy** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 12:53 am

It's definitely related to ONLY X20/21 series as I tried both 2100PRO and 2200BG on my X20, X22 and X23 and both cards caused high CPU temp on X20. So, confirmed.

And both cards caused it even when just plugged in, i.e. no drivers installed.

But, can we do something about it?

Raceboy · #20 Post by **Raceboy** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:05 am

Just for the information (and maybe help), here's miniPCI pinout: http://www.interfacebus.com/MiniPCI_Pinout_124Pin.html

Raceboy · #21 Post by **Raceboy** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 3:18 pm

Did some brainstorming, and I'm thinking of trying to measure actual CPU vCore, I/O and VTT voltages. Maybe miniPCI wifi is causing one of them to raise.

What do you guys think?

X21 + wireless miniPCI = high CPU temp.

X21 + wireless miniPCI = high CPU temp.

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