x120e: Where can I buy the 2x2 Broadcom wlan card?

I'm waiting on my system to arrive in the mail, but I've heard that the standard b/g/n is not that great, and Lenovo's wlan whitelist doesn't allow for many other cards.

I did find that, while Lenovo no longer offers the $20 wlan a/b/g/n upgrade (FRU: 60Y3251), it can be purchased from other sources. So far, I've found one online store, but they are selling the card for $55. I haven't had any luck on ebay yet.

Does anyone here know of any other vendor that sells the a/b/g/n card in the US?

If all fails, is there a way to remove the bios whitelist?

 

It's actually fine. I suppose you'd get slower file transfers on your LAN, but internet speeds are still plenty fast. I'd wait and evaluate actual speeds before jumping the gun.

 

The base Realtek wifi adapter has been giving me intermittent issues. Drops connection and then requires manual intervention to help re-establish connection. Tried latest drivers from both Lenovo and Realtek, random connection drops still occur.
No wireless issues on other devices with non-Realtek adapters.
But I say test it out first. No need to buy another component if it works.
Otherwise, you can buy an Intel 5100 wireless adapter on 3Bay for $16 or less, FRU 43Y6517.
It's whitelisted according to on the service parts manual.
Make sure the card has the FRU number on it, else you'll need to modify the BIOS whitelist.

 

Yeah, the Realtek 1x1 b/g/n card is pretty horrible. Consistently less range than my T500's Intel 5300 a/b/g/n, takes longer to connect, and occasionally drops connections. I'm thinking about getting a Lenovo-branded 5100 a/b/g/n or 6200 a/b/g/n--I believe both work, and should be less than $55.

 

Weird, I have zero issues. None at home. No issues at school, either. I only had drops when I went too aggressive on my undervolting.

 

I'm running Intel's Untimate-N 6300 series WLAN card in my X120e, it's not on Lenovo's whitelist...

It's VERY EASY to remove the Lenovo X120e whitelist which will open the system up to ANY WLAN adapter that fits unless there is an issue that causes hardware to conflict.

Removing the whitelist is as easy as flashing the bios. Well, technically you have to edit the bios BUT, other users out there have already done this. If you head over to the Mydigitallife forum, you can get the Lenovo X120e bios files that have the whitelist removed. Myself and several others on this forum can confirm they work fine.

 

@sugarkang - No one wants to hear about your bathroom habits. Let's try to show a little maturity, K?

As for the ThinkPad card, I don't have any issues with mine. For internet it seems about the same as my desktop, which is connected via ethernet, though I don't transfer much over the network.

 

Yeah, I figured that the stock b/g/n card was going to be pretty bad. I have an external USB adapter that has a similar realtek chipset, and the performance is horrible where I am. I was pointed to the direction of the whitelist-removed bios, and downloaded it right away, and now I have an Intel 6205 on order. I would have liked to find an atheros a/b/g/n device, but I've had nothing but great performance out of intel wireless devices, and they're supported very well in recent linux kernels.

 

Wondering if anyone has found an upgrade to the stock wifi card to the X120e?

Currently, I've tried SparePartsWarehouse.com for part# 60Y3251 as listed in the Lenovo Parts & Maintenance manual, but this part is no longer available from the manufacturer. Couldn't find anything on the Lenovo.com site. The option is no longer even available when configuring a new one.

If there is an alternative, please let me know.

Thanks

Just to add... I run a 5ghz wife network at home, and I didn't realize the stock card only supported 2.4ghz band. Otherwise, I would have gotten the upgrade.

 

There's a similar thread here which should give you some references for your X120e.

 

Oh thanks. I tried a search but came up with no results.

 

I've merged the two threads. Yep, the search function isn't all that great. You're better off using Google's site search:

Code:

forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm [insert search here]

Regarding the 2x2 Broadcom card... currently, it's overpriced/unavailable pretty much everywhere. If you do swap the WiFi card, you may need to flash a different BIOS version with the WiFi card whitelist removed.

A question for X120e users who have swapped WiFi cards: are there cards outside of the Realtek and Broadcom ones that do not require a custom whitelist-removed BIOS? The X100e supported 5x00-series Intel cards, but it seems like the X120e does not?

 

Trying to find more details on the Shirley Peak 1x2 card (43Y6517). Is it 2.4ghz only?

edit: figured it out - it's 2.4/5ghz. a/b/g/draft-n

 

IMO, nuke the bios with a modded one, find a stock 6300 cheaper than the lenovo branded lesser cards, grab one of the wwan antennas for makeshift 3x3 and step 4: profit.

I only got the broadcom 2x2 via CTO earlier this year since the discount % I had was really good. (and intel compatibility wasn't confirmed yet) Otherwise I would have done the above, I use 5ghz often.

 

I found an old PCIe card Broadcom BCM94322 that i scavenged from an older HP laptop. It's not the half-height card, so I imagine I'll have to use the available PCIe slot and remove the other wifi card. After hacking the BIOS, is it worth trying out?

 

I'm not sure if that slot even has pci-e wired, might be usb only.

 

It's the mini pci-e slot where the WAN card would go. It even has a couple antenna leads. I wonder if they perform the same as the antennas for wifi?

 

Yeah I have that slot empty too, but typically WAN cards are usb modems, so often that slot doesn't wire pci-e. Haven't seen any post about anyone truly testing the x120e with anything but the usual 3G cards in that slot.

A true mobile 3G antenna is tuned for lower freqs than wifi, but in my experience preinstalled laptop antennas are all more or less the same in a model and seem to be "good enough" for all the common frequencies (700~900, 1.7~2.4, less so for 5ghz+ wifi but not terrible and still worth it when 2.4 is crowded as hell)

 

@ Lenovo Forums


One guy says this:


"So for a while now I've been putting up with the cheap default option of the Realtek 1x1 WLAN in my x120e, it was only connecting at 72mbps to my Asus RT-N16 router running TomatoUSB firmware, and was yielding rather crappy 2.5-3MB/sec when transferring large files, barely any better than my 5 year old Wireless-G Apple MacBook.

I was going thru the router settings today, and found an option for the wireless, Channel Width 20 or 40mhz. It was set to 20mhz by default.

After changing it to 40mhz, the Realtek 1x1 connects at 150mbps (Wireless-N Lite I guess), and the speeds more than doubled. So for those who might be struggling with this crappy WLAN card, check your N router settings, it could be set at this lower 20mhz."

 

Sadly, the stock card only supports 802.11n in the 2.4 ghz range. If it only had 5ghz too, I'd be fine and dandy staying with this card. I did improve my N @ 5ghz reception for my other devices by manually selecting 5.8ghz on Channel 125 or something like that. Can't remember off the top of my head though.

While I was researching SSD's, I did come across someone installing a mSata card in that slot. I'm trying to find it now and refresh my memory. I want to say he was successful.

Ok... couldn't find it, but reading about mSata... and based on what Aluminum said, I'm thinking... not. I did try to pop in the Broadcom card I found, and nothing happened. Windows 7 didn't see it anywayz. I was in a rush since it was time to leave work, so I didn't get a chance to remove the stock wifi card.

I'm just irritated now with laptops in general. I build my own desktops, so I love being able to upgrade things on a whim without worrying too much about compatibility issues. If there's a slot or plug availiable, I can buy whatever fits and get it to work. Oh well...

 

I know I'm going to have a problem with realtek-based cards, maybe not so much with Broadcom devices. However, the only place I see the Broadcom 2x2 upgrade for the x120e is at sparepartswarehouse.com for $55, which I believe is very overpriced, compared to better WLAN devices you can get on Amazon or Newegg.

I looked at the parts catalog for the x120e and it appears that there may be only two devices on the x120e whitelist, for model numbers 0596-xxx, which is pretty much all the US models. The two devices are the Realtek b/g/n and the Broadcom a/b/g/n card.

I gave up looking for the Broadcom device and bought an Intel 6205 off of Amazon. I decided to go with the 6205 over the 6300, due to the number of antennae in the x120e. I know there's a third antenna meant for 3G, but I'm pretty conservative with resources and want to keep it free on the off chance that I get a WWAN device in the future. I will simply flash the x120e with a non-whitelisted firmware.

I've never heard of laptop manufacturers blocking the ability to use the hardware of one's choosing, that doesn't make sense to me. I've had nothing but Dells for the past decade and never had to deal with this.

 

Apple. While it irritates me that companies do this, it makes sense. They want to keep costs down. A lot of costs come from customer complaints. Complaints come from compatibility issues. Compatibility issues come from hardware not working with other hardware.

The stuff on the whitelist means it's been thoroughly checked and green lighted.

 

I'm pretty sure it was a post about another model, msata on x120e would make a ton of people giddy. You could still get a usb based SSD of some kind to work, but it would be nothing like a 310.

Ironically enough, some apple parts are a great way to get an atheros card with a proper country code in the eeprom. Makes life on linux a lot easier. (global code = worst case combination of every country's dumb freq rules)

The companies that whitelist have been known to claim they only do it to comply with FCC rules, but given all the vendors that don't and still get certified its just a smokescreen for parts control.

 

This is most likely their true reason for white-listing. It's definitely more about control, as there are tons of vendors, including Dell, that do not place these restrictions on their hardware.