CF-53 Wifi Bluetooth card upgrade?

Hi all!

I've been looking all over the internet for this answer: I have a CF-53 MK1 with and SSD and secondary HD at the DVD tray, 8GB of Ram, Win 64bit working like a champ. When I bought it on Ebay it stated that it was bluetooth, but when I opened the tray above the keyboard, there's no bluetooth module there.
My question is: Can you update the Wifi card for a newer version Wifi and bluetooth combined on this specific PC? Or do I have to add the OEM bluetooth module to it?
This is my first post, any help will be appreciated!!!

 

Win7 64bit

 

What wifi card is in it?
What is the full model number?

Found these photos




http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/cf-53-mk1-bluetooth-problems.795884/

 

Thank you for your reply!!! Theres no card there, it's empty...
I thought I could just upgrade the WIfi card to a wifi-bluetooth card like the newer pc's, Is that possible on this laptop? It has an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 model WL11A wifi card and it is working fine. I just like the bluetooth option for music while I work...

 

By the way, I checked the bios section and this is my setup:
BIOS v1.00L13
BIOS Conf 0010-0000-0007
Emb Controller V1.00L12

 

It is a standard bios. Thats good.
I doubt that the bluetooth on a wifi card will work.
I dont recall if I ever tried one or not.
I dont have a CF 53 anymore.

 

What gets me they have the Bluetooth card but not ribbon cable to go with it. So where do you find one of them ?? You would think when they were stripping these apart them would put them with it...no brains at all.

 

That annoys me too. Why not include the cable?
I have seen this before many times.
So now I have a selection of cables, so the only issue for me is what type of cable is it.

I do see it is 10 pin FFC which is the same as Bluetooth on a CF 31 and CF19.
I wonder if the more common board from a CF19 would work?

 

I would buy one but I wonder which is the right card. Will need to see if I have a 10 pin cable around here somewhere.

 

Those photos are the same card as far as I know. Just opposite sides.

Cable is either straight of flip.

 

The top card is a model # BT12A and the bottom one is a model # BT11A . Check the eBay link...

DFUP1950YB
https://m.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-To...631080?hash=item2cbfc097e8:g:TyQAAOSwhvFZJOm0

DFUP1950ZB
https://m.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-To...467692?hash=item33e59aecac:g:sAcAAOSwf-tatQKa

 

Here is the install info. The FFC cable is built in already.

 

I will have to pull mine apart and check it out. I also updated my last post

 

mk1 has BT 2.1 ---BT11A
mk2 has BT 4.0 ---BT12A

I would stick with the proper card for the proper mk just to be safe.

 

Good idea. Think I will order it since the cable is there...just checked

 

Awesome information gentlemen, Thanks a lot!!! I was trying to see if a combo wifi-bluetooth could work since they are a lot cheaper than the original bluetooth module. The original is $30.00, the combo one is about $7.00 on Ebay.
I will order one of each, the original and the combo one just to see if I can make it work and will follow up with my finding. Thanks again guys!

 

Got my Bluetooth card today. Hopefully in the next few days I will get it installed.

 

Hi. Just a follow up. I received the new wifi-bluetooth combo mini card. I did the install in my CF53 and downloaded Intel drivers for both wifi and bluetooth. Good news: wifi works like a champ, bad news: bluetooth is a no-go but kind of expected... Bios maybe?) Regardless it was a super cheap card on Ebay. I'm still waiting for the OEM bluetooth card I ordered from Japan... I will follow up with updates when I get it installed and working.

 

I had the same results on my CF 31, CF 19, and FZ G1

Here is why it wont work. I did some searching.
One pcie slot can support one device, but mnipcie combo cards have 2 devices integrated, wifi and bluetooth. So it uses pcie connection for wifi and usb for bluetooth.
The following I know from experience.
Toughbooks are known to NOT have the USB on the mini PCIE slot.

So it would work if we soldered the USB wires from another extra port inside to the mini PCIE slot.
Extra unused port such as GPS, fingerprint reader dock ect..

 

Ya know, this all makes sense now.
I was experimenting a while back with an Azurewave CB160h card in my FZ G1.
WIFI would work in the WLAN slot but no Bluetooth. Bluetooth would work in the WWAN slot
but no WIFI.
So it seems Bluetooth and WWAN are usb devices and WIFI is a PCI device.
A few laptops have PCI and usb enabled on the mini pcie ports but most only have one of the two.

 

Outstanding! You couldn't have explained it better, it does makes sense (especially when you look at the colors for the wwan card antennas, they are the standard black & white antennas). I just thought it was going to be a plug and play challenge with a matter of finding the right drivers... It was just for my own curiosity...! Regardless, my loss is $6.99 and a cool challenge. I guess I'll settle for the $24.99 original card. Thanks for your help and follow up.
keep up the good work!

 

Hey guys. Just a note to let you know that I did the final install of the original bluetooth card for this laptop and it still was a big pain to install! After the installation, windows recognized the card and installed the drivers... Unfortunately, after many, many attempts to connect, no joy... After a lenghty search online and no references, I replaced the Panasonic OEM drivers (Toshiba) with windows mobile and the freaking thing works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I spent 10 minutes installing the bluetooth module, but it took me days to find something that will make sense!!!.
It is working like a champ now. Thank you all for the awesome follow up, pictures, guidance and best of all the advise of not giving up! I hope this helps someone out there!