Well supported wireless card for Lenovo T520

[Kevin Oberman]

> Sender: adrian.chadd at gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:33:22 +0800
> From: Adrian Chadd <adrian at freebsd.org>
> 
> FYI, There's documentation and code out there for doing this to the
> pre-11n NICs. This hasn't been done for the 11n NICs.
> 

But, are there any pre-N NICs that are half-height PCIe format? I
suspect not. if there was a way to make an Atheros "look" like an Intel,
that would be great, but I suspect not (and I'd have to modify the
Atheros driver to recognize the "Intel" wireless card as an Atheros.)

I am now leaning toward looking for an Intel Centrino NIC as it should be
one that Lenovo will accept. At least in the past, they have not sold
cards with non-standard IDs, so any card that is one they sell should
work. that means Intel Wireless-N 1000, 6205, or 6300. I have no idea if
any of these is supported by any current driver, though.

Can anyone confirm that any of these three cards will work or an way to
find out what PCI IDs the BIOS will accept?

Thanks, Adrian, imp, jhb and all the others who have made suggestions.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
E-mail: 
kob6558 at gmail.com
> 
> Adrian
> 
> On 20 June 2011 00:13, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Jun 19, 2011, at 8:24 AM, Maciej Milewski wrote:
> >
> >> On Sunday 19 of June 2011 14:16:32 John Baldwin wrote:
> >>> You might want to make sure that your laptop will accept a different
> >>> wireless adapter.  I tried to replace the Broadcom WIFI adapter in an HP
> >>> netbook and the system refused to POST with an Atheros WIFI adapter.
> >>> Apparently the BIOS would check the PCI ID of the adapter and only
> >>> booted if it was the Broadcom adapter.  (The message it output during
> >>> POST actually said "restore valid WIFI nic" or some such.)  I resorted
> >>> to using ndis(4) (though it looks like the Linux equivalent of bwn(4)
> >>> supports my adapter now, so maybe someday I'll get to use bwn(4)).
> >>
> >> In such case there are options to find a card which was made specific to
> >> manufacturer or find the patched bios(or do this by self but that may be very
> >> dangerous). I had such situation and went the whitelist way with my Lenovo
> >> laptop and I have no more problem with incompatible wireless(wwan and wlan)
> >> devices. The two computer manufacturers who are doing such security of their
> >> profit are HP and Lenovo. I don't know if others are doing that too.
> >
> > The other option is to change the ID in the BIOS (hardish) or get a atheros card that you can change the ID for (less hard: google is your friend ehre).
> >
> > Warner
> >
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