Attaching MiniPCI socket to M40X board

I have a few faulty Equium M40X of which I managed to get one to work. Only problem is that this one has no MiniPCI socket, but instead just the solder points on the board. Question is if I removed the socket from one of the other boards and soldered it on to this board, would it work as normal? I would also have to drop the board into a different base so as to have the on/off switch to make the WiFi card that I wish to use work.

Anyone know or already done it? Is it that simple or is there more to it?

Seems odd why Toshiba leave the connectors out. I also have a Sat Pro A60 which is exactly the same with no connector.

Thanks

 

Manufacturers do that because they just mass produce the boards for several variations of the laptop they plan to sell. To be used for some with the slot and some without.

It may be possible, technically, however if you fail you risk damaging the whole board. I'd avoid attempting this unless you're prepared for that.

Remember also that when they started using the motherboard for your model, they knew they weren't putting the slot into it, so they may not have completed the connections on the circuit board... Or they may have used components that wouldn't be giving it the power necessary.

All in all, avoid this unless you are bored and don't care if you damage the board (which is very possible). But good luck if you should try it anyway.

 

Thanks for the reply. This particular model I've got was only sold through a large electrical chain in the UK and so is a special. I've compared it with the other mainboards I have and it looks identical except for the connector.

After some searching I found someone who had done it to an A65 and it worked - http://www.geocities.com/ozgur.yavuzcetin/techie.html.

I may well be tempted to give it a go as it shouldn't be too difficult.

 

On a non-functioning system board I used a hot air gun (one of those that is used to remove paint from window frames) and carefully heated up the connector until it came off the board. On the receiving system board there was already solder on the connectors so it was a fairly straight forward job of soldering all the pins.

While I had the system board out I had a look at why the cardbus wasn't working. Saw 3 broken tracks which was probably caused by the connector being loose. Fixed the tracks with some wire.

Put it all back together with a wifi card inserted in the minipci socket and turned it on. Card was detected and when drivers installed it works fine. Cardbus also working.

All in all I'm well chuffed and as I originally suspected everything was in place for the minipci card to work. How much did they save by not putting the connector in? Seems well mean to me.

 

Good job man . It's a little mean I suppose, but it's business. Why bother spending the money putting it in 50,000 notebooks when the company would rather you buy an entirely new notebook in two years? Or it could have just been an oversight. The Toshiba Satellite I have was advertised as having built in wifi, then after I purchased it I soon realized that wasn't true. I got a letter from Toshiba a month later informing me due to an oversight some of the models may not have internal wifi. (That means they forgot to put it in half of them haha.) At least they remembered to put in the pci so I could throw a card in myself .