T30 + Intel PROSet 2915abg (8086:4224/8086:1010)

[kbachelder]

Hi all - first post...

I have an old T30 (2366-88U) that I'm trying to revive for my daughter's use, and attempting to improve the things that I just never got around to... namely the big honking PCMCIA network card that sticks out the side.

So I've obtained an Intel 2915abg card. Of course, nothing goes as nicely as it SHOULD, so instead of "just working", it has been one nightmare after another. Here's what I've done so far:

1.) Hack the CMOS with the no-1082 "fix" found at command-tab.

2.) Boot into Ubuntu 8.04 (which happened to be installed already), and poof, the wireless is working flawlessly without any changes! Great news! (probably using ndiswrapper and ipw2200, if I had to guess).

...However, my daughter wants Windows XP, so...

3.) Fresh install of Windows XP Pro SP2, fully patched to SP3 and all the little stuff from MS Update.

4.) Download the 2915abg driver/PROSet utility from Intel, installed and getting the dreaded "This device cannot be started" (Error Code 10), with the yellow exclamation point in Device Mgr. The device shows up correctly in the list, so it's being identified, but it just won't start... grr...

5.) Found a page with a potential fix for error code 10 on a wireless device, describing a registry issue... gave it a shot, and no dice.

6.) Uninstalled the device and drivers, and reinstalled from the Lenovo support site for the 2915abg driver... still no luck.

Upon reading some posts on this forum and others, I see that IBM has a "Whitelisted" list of devices in BIOS... so the big question is... Does the Intel PROSet device ID/subsystem NEED to be in the BIOS for it to work? It seems that people are getting other devices to work without BIOS hacks... or are they? Are the working devices just variants of the whitelisted devices? I'm curious as to what is working and what isn't (and why!).

I have found the Phoenix BIOS Editor 2.1, which is a legit download from the Intel support site, and also comes with WinPhlash, which can dump the BIOS out to a file. Out of curiousity, I decided to see what was in this "Whitelist", so I opened up the BIOS dump from WinPhlash in a hex editor...

starting at offset 0x00076770:

Code: Select all

Enumerator     Device         Subsystem
00             B91404A5       B9140050
01             86802912       86800522
02             8C161300       68140804

Now, after some extensive reading, I found that the BIOS data is in Little Endian, so the bytes are flipped, resulting in a device ID/Subsystem listing that means something:

Code: Select all

Enumerator     Device         Subsystem
00             14B9A504       14B95000 - Cisco Aironet 802.11b
01             80861229       80862205 - Intel(R) PRO/100 SP Mobile Combo Adapter
02             168C0013       14680408 - 11b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Adapter [Ambit microsystem Corp]

And there are a few bytes of 00 for padding after that short list, so it appears that only 3 cards are really "allowed" to work with this machine.

My device is 80864224 80861010, which I could replace the 80861229 80862205 device with, and recalculate the checksum.

Now, for the question(s)...

If I am determined to get this 2915abg to work, does the card's PCI ID absolutely NEED to reside in the BIOS? Or is it just an exercise in futility to try to get this card working by editing the BIOS? Is there anyone out there that has a T30 with a functioning 2915a/b/g card installed?! If so, please list the Device ID and Subsystem (found in Windows Device Manager Properties)...

I'm relatively confident that I can get the BIOS edited and the Checksums squared away to re-flash the BIOS with my card as a "valid" MiniPCI device, but I'm going to tear out the little hair I have left if I'm still stuck with a big yellow ! in Device Manager after all that work...

It seems that all the 2915 / T30 threads end up fading away after 4-5 posts with no real resolution one way or another, unfortunately... so I don't know if the OPs ditched the card and got a different one working, ditched the laptop and don't care anymore, or got it working and ditched the forum follow-up (tsk,tsk)...

Hopefully other people with this problem can at least get a definitive YES or NO from this thread...

Thanks in advance, all suggestions/comments/thoughts welcome and appreciated!

-KB

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.
This card is a moot point apparently.
See e.g. this post:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=58251
or this one:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... twork_card

Unless you need the a wifi, you'd probably be better off with the Intel 2200bg.
I have to look in my machines if I have a 2915 anywhere.
I've got about 30 of them at the moment, so it may take a while...