Identifying an internal wireless(?) card (CF-28)

My CF-28 has a small doohickey located under the battery.

It's a "Sierra Wireless CDPD SB300" and has "heart of your wireless machine" printed on it. It's screwed to the board, and additionally has what appears to be aluminium tape holding it in place.

I was never able to get my laptop to work in a WiFi environment until I added my own wireless card (3Com 3CRSHPW196) in one of the PC slots.

There is a "wireless" button on the front of the laptop, but although the light comes on when I press it, it doesn't seem to do anything.

So......

1) is my on-board wireless card broken?

2) is there an internal dip-switch somewhere to activate it?

3) is it from an older (non-available) form of wireless, such as an analog signal?

 

1) is my on-board wireless card broken?
Not necessarily!

2) is there an internal dip-switch somewhere to activate it?
Yeah.. on the board this Sierra card is mounted on.

3) is it from an older (non-available) form of wireless, such as an analog signal?
Yes, unfortunately.. the RIM and Sierra cards don't do us much good at all. Just about all you can do with it is gut it and install a homebrew module!

 

Okay, thanks.

Next question then:

1) can you tell from the photo is the dip switches are in the correct sequence?

2) Can I get an updated card from Panasonic?

3) is this the "internal PCMCIA" space you guys are talking about?

The reason I want to do this is because my vehicle mount blocks access to the PC card slots, and the wireless card I have now needs to extend its antenna to operate. I don't think I could install the wireless PC card inside because there's no room to extend the antenna. The card I have looks like this:

 

Since the dip switches don't control anything as far as you are concerned... It doesn't matter what position they are in.

An "updated" card won't help you since they no longer supply service to the card you have.

This is not the internal card slot. That is located behind the LAN/Modem cover. You can install a wireless card in the internal slot and use the pull up antenna as the wifi antenna (With a few mods)...

Most of us remove the LAN card and the modem card. Then we buy a LAN/Modem combo card in the LAN card position. This opens up an available mini-pci card slot. I use the Engenious 600mW wifi card as it is pretty much the most powerful wifi card around. The antennas can be handled in several ways. You can mod in an internal antenna... Or use that in conjunction with a side mount SMA jack... Or use the old RIM antenna location.

There are many, many threads around dealing with all the different variables. I think the CF-28FAQ has a lot of great links to show you pretty much everything you need.

 

Thanks. I guess I should have RTFM before posting - Since my last post I 'discovered' the internal card slot, but my card still won't work in it. I will look into the other options.

So can I just remove this old Sierra unit to save weight?

 

Yes you can go ahead and remove it.
Save all the parts though. You might use some of them in the future for installing an internal GPS system.
Read all the stickies at the opening page and you will learn a lot.

Bob