Internal Wireless?

Ok, so i didnt get internal wireless in my R4000 model, but i'm putting it in. So i read around first to knwo how to get this done, and i find out that HP bios blocks any non-HP wireless cards. With this in mind, i search Ebay for a suitable wireless card that is HP, having found one and purchased it:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5215167825

knowing it was an HP card. The card looks to be in excellent working order, but when i install..WOAH!!! ERROR 104! internal wireless unsupported!!!

any ideas for why this could be? I ended up tricking the machine and it now works kinda (poped it in after bios loadup with keyboard screw in) Right now its working, but i dont want to have to do this ghetto rig EVERY time i reboot. Any ideas as to why this card isnt compliant?

 

Apocolipse,

It's because it's the wrong card for your system. This card has the Spare P/N (SPS) of 326685-001, but your system needs the 377408-001 (for most of the world) or 377408-002 (for rest of the world). HP's are known to not work with foreign cards, but this is just the wrong card.

You can locate the P/N of the correct WiFi card from the service manual located on the HP site. Below is the link, just goto page 129 (section 6.12), it lists this exact P/N you need and how to remove it.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00364919.pdf

-Vb-

-Vb-

 

so wait, you're telling me that not only will they block out non hp cards, but their own if its not for the model?! wtf!!! i really dont want to spend $89 and wait for a backordered part. Cant seem to find the one i need on ebay

 

HP has a whitelist in their BIOS that lists "approved" miniPCI wireless cards. The documented reason for this is that the FCC made them do it (HP Hardware Guide for the zv5000, page 8-1). Oddly enough, pretty much no one else has such a restriction (IBM might). I found out about this the hard way when I tried to swap in a Linux-friendly Atheros card in place of the Broadcom-based card HP uses (Broadcom is Linux-hostile and ndiswrapper hadn't been ported to 64-bit Linux yet). There is no technical reason for this whitelist to exist, it's strictly bureaucratic.

 

is there any documentation on this whitelist and what cards it includes?

 

No. It's one of the few things HP does that infuriates me (the other being refusing to offer high-end GPUs in their AMD-based notebooks, though I expect that will eventually change). Your best bet is to follow Venombite's instructions.

 

They have been using disastrous GPU's on most of their models for so many years, it's time to give up on HP and not expect reasonable designs anymore... They are mass-sellers, and they target those who uses notebooks for emails or CPU-intensive apps on occation, but not for challenging 3D. And their WiFi list is offensive. Plus, FCC regulations state that WiFi cards should have low power and be useful only at a short range, allegedly to avoid interference with other devices. How true this is? Cell phones call over miles and not cause deadly effects on any equipment, why WiFi card should?? I reason, FCC had other goal on their mind. And that goal was not to facilitate progress. I would prefer the illegal higher-power non-FCC card any day.

 

The cell phone companies have a limited number of regulated base stations. WiFi has APs all over the place. People would trip all over each other if everyone had the 200mW transmitters instead of 30mW. As it is there are 8-10 APs that I can see from my desk at least intermittantly, and those are just the people who don't know enough to turn their SSID broadcast off. Cell phones are about 600mW, IIRC, and vastly lower bandwidth, and used less than WiFi would be, so they can get decent range despite the pathetically weak antenna on your phone. Anyhow, the FCC has good reason to restrict the common WiFi gear. Using decent antennas (like the two antenna panels HP mounts behind the screen, and the 6dB omni I added to my AP) will do wonders within WiFi's limitations though.

 

Its possible to get a few 200 mw aps out there, and also to add the range further get a Yagi antenna or a directional antenna but i doubt many would want such a large range, it can get up to 5 miles this way. or 10 with the directional antennas but those are very annoying. There is a problem with laptops though.. dont they need the same antenna on their side at such a large range? (Yagi style (those tv antennas))

 

That sounds like a classical technical prob to me. To solve it, one needs to develop technology to resolve signals from different overlapping AP, not prohibit the use of higher power transmitters.

Remember what talks were popular early in the 20'th century, when Ford's first cars started traveling 20 miles per hour. The people we used to horses and tried their best to limit the speed on the roads, to perevent a mess that "will occur if everyone travels at crazy speed of 20 mph!". Luckely for us, highways and driving rules were developed instead