CF-29 wifi

I have tried the search, but the google search searched the whole of the notebooks forums and the forum search brings up an error...

To repace the wifi card, do i need to remove the whole of the bottom of the machine?? and if that is the case, how is the processor interfaced to the case? will i need some thermal paste? or a thermal pad of a specific thinkness?

 

Yes you remove the bottom
I sent you a link to instuctions
The pad will probably come of clean so it should be an easy swap


Alex

 

Yes... The whole bottom plate needs to come off. REMOVE the battery first!

Then the DIMM cover for the RAM... Remove the RAM and carefully unplug the speaker wire plug beside the RAM. The thermal pads normally come of okay but with bits or pieces sticking to other side. Sometimes you can just gently nudge the thermal pads a little to get the proper connection. But you can also use Arctic Silver Paste to make sure you have a good thermal connection for proper heat dissipation.

It's an easy swap but you should have a good set of Wiha screwdrivers. The "el-cheapo" type screwdrivers are more likely to strip or partially strip a screw than to remove it. Also... The best way to remove the screws are to apply moderate downward force to break it loose and then ease up to back them out the rest of the way.

I'm sure Tomcat's instructions were similar but I figured we might as well spell it out in the forum a little bit for others...

 

cheers guys, I had the link for the service manual from the FAQ, but it was the 'value added' knowledge wrt the thermal pads that I was after!

Merry Christmas!

 

Yes

The Mk-1 had the Intel 2100B card, the mk-2 on had a Intel 2200BG and the latest Mk-4 and Mk-5 used the Intel 2915ABG

I consider the Intel 2100B card Junk , It has low throughput and even worse its range is short

If you can afford the Engenius card great, if you can’t the 2915 or the 2200 card will work
The downside to changing the wi-fi cards in these is you loose the Centrino designation when booting and it reverts to Pentium M

Alex

 

Why is losing the centrino designation a downside? My understanding of centrino is that it was a power saving combination, which is all well and fine, but if you replace the intel wifi card with one that is stronger it stands to reason the power the new card takes will be greater. TANSTAAFL ;P

 

centrino does just dictate a certain CPU, Chipset&wifi card combination, a newer card with better range or speed will break that combo, but there will be no real downsides... its just badge enginerring... so much so that Intel has actually ceased the centrino brand now...

Im changing my card for a n-speed card, i live in a situation where AP density isnt an issue, but throughput is my main need...

 

That's more or less what I was thinking too. Just figured I'd ask in case there really was something more to it I wasn't aware of.

Thanks

 

Some Sony's do the same thing.... You MUST load the BLOATWARE in order to have everything work. Trying to install just a plain copy of XP Pro on a Sony Vaio without the bloatware can give you all sorts of error as the build-out is designed to make sure you are using their parts. I call BS on that crap. I just rebuilt a Sony Vaio for a neighbor and if I didn't install the blaotware...It would not install the wifi. (It was apparently included in the bloatware... Or at least needed to address it before it would load.) I took out the crappy wifi card and installed an Intel B/G card from an old MK3 CF-29.... I loaded the latest Intel drivers for it and then, miraculously, all the errors and question marks went away in Device Manager.

These designers should be shot for doing this. Well... Maybe not shot... Have their fingernails pulled out? Maybe not... I don;t know... 99% of laptop/PC users don't have a clue anyway.

I had one the other day... The guy had IE8, Mozilla AND Chrome all installed on his laptop... And was apparently trying to use all of them. He had web page hijackers-a-million. He also had 7 logons for his little laptop... One for him and his wife, one for his son and daughter and three for the different grandkids. Talk about a mess....

 

I would dump IE and use Chrome exclusively, but there are still some sites that will not work with Chrome (like the configurator site). Once they get all the bugs worked out, away goes IE!

 

I like Firefox, but it too lacks the ability to run with Windows Update. I have found that XP is faster and happier if you shut down unneeded services and applications and avoid redundancy in dealing with file types.

I also shut down and/or delete the .ASP and Guest accounts. I run with just an Admin and 1 User.

If you have everything imaged, you can also shut down System Restore and Indexing for a big speed boost.

I was able to run XP Pro on a 400 MHz P3 CF-M34 this way.

 

Kudos to Panasonic for not loading bloat ware on the recovery disc. My first notebook was a Toshiba…. full of bloat and trial software. A Clean install of XP was quite a performance increase.