[ask] hel80 wireless things

Hi all..
This is my first post and i'm from indonesia,so forgive me for my bad english..

okey, the problem is i have a Compal HEL80 notebook i just bought 2 year ago without internal wifi card..so up till now i'm using an USB wifi card..

but now,for some reasons, i want to buy an internal wifi card..there are a couple of questions i'd like to ask :
1. i'm confused in figuring out wether my notebook has a mini-pci or mini pci-express slot. how can i figure this out without opening the case, or if i need to, which part of case should i open?
2. i heard that to attach internal wifi card, i need 2 pre-installed antena cable inside my notebook and to attach it to the 2 connector on the internal wifi card. my question is, if there is only one antena cable, will it still working fine?or do i need to attach a second antena cable myself?and how to do that?
3. and by the way, what will the antenna cable should look like?do you have any picture of that?and the picture of mini-pci or pci-e slot?
4. i want to buy an internal wifi card that has atheros chip on that, what product will you suggesting?and the price range??

i'm sorry for the many numbers of my question..please reply me..thanks..

 

Welcome to NBR,

The Hel-80 uses a Mini-PCIe(express) wifi card. Most people should have a Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG in that slot-at least in the US.

Here is an assembly video for the Hel80(3:25 deals with the wifi card)
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I seriously doubt it will work with 1 wire(I personally have no clue) but 2 antennas wires(see the video for what they look like) should hopefully be already there.

Back in March 2007, I did some research on Wifi cards and came up with this(another poster was also interested in Atheros cards:

I do not know how well the cards perform(or even it they will work) and they may not readily available so...

 

okey Kdawgca..i'm downloading the video right now and i'll be studying for it..
i bought the notebook at the first time it came into indonesia..and at that time, the wifi was optional, so i just bought an USB wifi card..but now i need the mini pci-e one..but i need some resources to get it done..

btw, in indonesia, especially in my city, it is quite difficult to look for a mini pci-e wifi card..but i'll try tomorrow..

and ohya, is it possible to make the antenna cable by myself?do you have any references for this?

thanks for your kind reply..

 

Yeah, avaiblity is a big concern for people is some parts of the world. I would check to seek if the 2 wire atennas are there before even considering adding it yourself... I assume signal interference and risks associated with soldering would be a problem.

FYI, the location of the wifi card(with hopefully 2 wires) is next the memory compartment under a lid/ cover with 1 screw(the memory lid cover is the one in the middle of the underside of the notebook-make sure you take out the battery and ground yourself.

 

well..one question?should i soldered it?in the video you provided me before, it didnt show any soldering things when he attached the wifi card to the slot..

btw, yeah i found 2 wireless cable..the only problem now is to find the wifi mini pci-e card which is quite rare here..

 

As long as the two wire are there, then you should be good to go when you get the wifi card since those wires are the antennas. After installing the wifi card(just follow the video- just connect the wires to the card and screw it down in place), just turn on the laptop and if done properly(and assuming the wifi card works), Windows will ask you for drivers.If there is a driver disk provided with the wifi card, use that or just download drivers from the manufacterers site.


If you cant find a Atheros wifi card, look for an Intel card(Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG would be your best bet)...also online would probably be a better place to get the wifi card(ebay is a good source)

 

I had a AR5008E-3NX in my old HEL81(like a HEL80 with out the nvidia graphics card) and it worked. I think it was a 3 wire card but I only had to use it with the 2 antenna wires that were available. The wifi part of it worked as good as the Intel card, but the wireless switch on the side of the case would not turn it on or off and the FN keys couldn't control it either. Also Compal's WWS to turn on and off wifi and blue tooth didn't work with it. It was on all the time, but it worked.
I would agree with Kdawgca that the Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG would be your best choice, and use the Atheros as a very last choice.

 

Even the 4965AGN is an excellent choice to match a future N router.

 

well i choose to have an atheros-based wifi card because in my experience, it is the most spported wifi chipset on linux and windows for some wifi programs..

well..sorry if i cant get what i mean to you,but yeah..at the very last, ill go for intel abg..

thanks mate..

 

Make sure to follow good practices of installing electronics components, to wear antistatic gloves and ground your self before to start working in the board, you could break the laptop, very easily.

 

No need for going only to abg, you can easily use 4965AGN with only two antennas connected and probably shorly coming new Intel adapter with WiMax support.

 

If you use G may be, but not for N, N need all three antennas because the standard related to MIMO.

 

Not all antennas should be deffinatly connected fot N to work. I already posted acording this thing:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2979647&postcount=13

 

For N to see the advantage of the 3 spatial diversity antennas (MIMO) the link must be suffering multipath, which obviously wasn't the case when you did the test. But if you do have multipath problems then you will certainly see the benefit of MIMO.

BTW, do you know what is the arrangement for the antennas? My understanding is that you have a 2:3 arrangement (2 transmit, 3 receive), 2 transmitting/receiving antennas and 1 stand alone receiving antenna, so Tx/Rx, Tx/Rx, Rx, can you associate their positions in the minicard? (e.g. Tx/Rx in position 1 and 2 and Rx in position 3)

Very nice stuff, I appreciate your effort to do the tests, I have one question though; what is your relationship between the xxkBps usefull bandwidth and the xxMbps speed?

Using N you had 133Mbps and G you had 54Mbps, so the N was 2.4 times faster (WLAN link). If you had 300Mbps with N, then you could certainly have had about 5.5 times faster WLAN link with N.

 

And you'll see it, because you are using 2 antennas at once. G only uses one at a time. I think they work little different from fixed Rx Tx pair since the result certainly wouldn’t look anything near it. The signal travels in some frequency rage, meaning there is no problem to use one and the same antenna to receive and to send data at the same time. Now that for is there whole tree antennas? Maybe because of a wider frequency range there appeared a need to send a really strong signal through all of them at once? Well ether way I’m not sure because I haven’t studied the technology itself, the only thing I now it uses multi frequencies.

As I remember the wires in the test were connected on the corners and the middle was free.

1mbps = 1*1024/8 KB/s. And I don't care what is written in connection status, it's only practical bandwidth that I care about. Thor example gigabit twisted pair connection in reality reaches only about 140mbps of usual bandwidth. And another matter, there is no physical router released to the pint that provides connection at 300mbps.

 

I agree for G you might no need all antennas, but for N you do, this is regulated by the standard and therefore it impacts the technology implementation. MIMO implementation does improve the air interface.

Yes, the technology uses OFDMA, this is the technology making possible for multiple users accessing the same wireless access point. However the RF modulation will change to accommodate 66 possible rates in draft N.

There are routers providing 300Mbps, just start a thread in Networking and Wireless and you will see.

Now I understand why my numbers weren't the same than yours, actually you just have to multiply by 8 to pass from kBps to kbps, the 1,024 thing is associated with memory addressing, here we are just talking about data throughput.

Anyway, thank you for posting this "meat" material, as supposed to "milk" or easy stuff