Well supported wireless card for Lenovo T520

[Bernhard Schmidt]

On Wednesday, June 22, 2011 01:27:58 Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > 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.

The Lenovo BTO page provides 4 Intel cards to choose from, those 3
above + the 6250, all of those are supported by iwn(4). I'm currently
typing this over a 6205.

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

No clue, but given that those are available to choose from on the
Lenovo shop..
 
> Thanks, Adrian, imp, jhb and all the others who have made suggestions.
> > 
> > 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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> > 
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-- 
Bernhard