From: "Stanley Sidlov" Received: from mxout1.mailhop.org ([63.208.196.165] verified) by 2rosenthals.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.0.9) with ESMTP id 390598 for os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com; Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:09:19 -0400 Received: from mxin2.mailhop.org ([63.208.196.176]) by mxout1.mailhop.org with esmtp (Exim 4.51) id 1GSemS-000JlT-Ty for os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com; Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:09:17 -0400 Received: from admin.nni.com ([216.107.0.100]) by mxin2.mailhop.org with esmtp (Exim 4.51) id 1GSemS-0000BP-Rz for os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com; Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:09:16 -0400 X-Scan:Scanned for Virus By NuNet Received: from [67.81.124.65] (account stanleys@cybernex.net) by admin.nni.com (CommuniGate Pro POP 4.1.8) with XMIT id 528449308; Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:09:16 -0400 To: "OS/2 Wireless Users Mailing List" Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:09:12 -0400 (EDT) Reply-To: "Stanley Sidlov" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: PMMail 2.20.2300 for OS/2 Warp 4.5 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [OS2Wireless]Re: Adding internal Wi-Fi to non-Wi-Fi-ready notebooks Message-ID: X-Mail-Handler: MailHop by DynDNS X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:20:00 -0500, Lothar Frommhold wrote: >I have an A31p, 2653-R8U, without WiFi and wonder if there could be >perhaps an easy installation of a WiFi mini card (or whatever it takes) >possible? How could I find out what I really need to make the notebook >WiFi ready? Any advise would be much appreciated! The antenna are the issue. To get best coverage you should have two, and one should be horizontal and the other vertical. The hitachi mini-antenna I found on ebay could be used in very tight spaces and the seller suggests in laptops not already equipped with antenna but the question is will they have the same signal reception/strength as a longer wire. It appears that many new laptops without wifi cards have the antenna anyway. There are sites that show how to open up the LCD bezel to run a antenna wire. eBay has wire kits for $10 and under that offer a pair of 10-20 inch antennas some with metal brackets at the end to screw down to some part of a motherboard or hinge or something in the laptop or with nothing at the end. The wires are very thin. The connector for the mini pci card pin-point in size. You have to have at least one. The second issue is the mini-pci card itself. It appears from my research of the last two days that pins 11-14 and 16 are vendor specific and can have differing requirements. This is how some mfgrs are controlling which devices can be used in their laptops, as the cards are cheaper in many cases than a PC Card that's inserted and with a long antenna wire running the length of a laptop have better reception. In the case of the Toshiba branded 2200B/G that I just got from Lewis for a Toshiba 2430-s255 laptop, asking for the Tosh OEM didn't help me, as I was hoping. I had to tape over pin 13 (one of those vendor pins) to make the card 'turn on' no setting of the hardware switch would activate it for me. Toshiba support wanted me to spend $35 with them to see if they could activate it, but they wouldn't guarantee that they could. Some IBMs have a 1308 or some other number error in the bios, but the bios can be hacked to make non-IBM cards work. What is the specifics for your laptop? I don't know.