SZ and wi-fi antennas, Intel 3945ABG -> Intel 4965AGN?

Its been a while since I disassembled my SZ, but I was looking at the Intel 4965 Wi-Fi Draft N card and noticed that it has 3 antenna hookups. One day, when it actually gets to being fully drafted and finalized it would be great to put that into the laptop.



Question though, I assume that each antenna hookup is for the different wi-fi? (A, G/B, and N?) And since the older SZ (not sure about the newer ones) only have 2 antenna wires, how hard would it be to add a new wire into the laptop? Does the antenna go into the lcd display portion or is it just in and around the body?

Or alternatively, we could use only 2 of the hookup points and say, leave the A channel hookup unattached? Assuming my assumption from above is correct.

Thoughts?

 

Interesting question. GOod someone raised it. Haven't dared disassemble my new lappie yet, but I sure will soon. Hope someone can come up with a good theory/answer to this.

 

Did some brief searching, it looks like both internal antenna (main & aux) go into the lcd display... one on each side. Makes sense though as putting the antenna into the lcd display would maximize the signal for send/receive.

Now since the 4965 has 3 antenna hookups, I did some searching for pictures of the SZ antenna. Wanted to see what the other end of the antenna looks like since it is inside the lcd display. Unfortunately couldn't find any, however I did find pictures of other compaonies, ie HP, Toshiba.

Guess another solution is just to get a 3rd wire and run it around inside the main body of the laptop. Would be rather challenging to open up the LED based LCD screen to put a 3rd wire in... since its very thin. (Premium models)

edit:
Thinking of buying a 4965 card to put into my laptop since I was thinking of buying a new 3945 to replace my old 3945... it gets rather hot just being on and low/no activity (Breaking down?). Which in turn heats up my touchpad insanely... to where I don't leave my finger on the touchpad cause its rather uncomfortable.

 

I would recomend you try get hold of a 3945 card somewhere cheap to try first. Issue could be something else? Power supply going wicked on your card maybe? Just so you don't destroy a brand new 4965 I mean.

 

3 wires are there because N standard uses multiple antennas to transmit/recieve simultaneously, unlike a/b/g standards which can use only one antenna simultaneously.

 

On routers they are set half a wavelenght apart, so there always is "peak" distance to the router.

Is it the same IN the laptop? Spaced in a specific distance for optimal reception?

 

This is the closest picture that I could find. Unfortunately it does not show where the ends attach in the LCD bezel, but they probably connect to the two metal pieces left of the motherboard.

 

Yep, I understand that N standard uses MIMO. I was wondering in regards to A/B/G... how to determine which antenna for main and aux, since there is no label and A/B/G would really only need 2 antennas. But if I do get the 4965, I'll get a 3rd antenna and route it around the body of the laptop. May not be the best for reception, but better then having one left unplugged.

Thanks Bogart, nice picture.

Unfortunately yeah it doesn't show more detail about the ends of the wires. Did you take apart the laptop or find the picture? That person really took the SZ apart. Also looks like its a Premium SZ, one with carbon fibre lid. Oh and one of those two metal pieces left of the motherboard look like a hard drive mounting plate (Well the bottom one matches, but the upper one doesn't appear to be one.)

 

I have a SZ 150P/C and upgraded to the new card (4965agn). I tried just using th two antennas in diffrent configurations, but to no avail. I will say though, as having done a processor upgrade and a hard drive upgrade, this is a very simple machine to work on. Look at the guides on laptoplogic.com and the is one for taking the keyboard and palm rest off.

 

Oh I know how to disassemble the laptop, just was wondering about the antennas going into the LCD screen when I posted. Was lazy and didn't want to take mine apart...

Since then, I've installed the 4965AGN, a third antenna and the Hitachi 7k200 drive. Seems to work fine.

 

Lyshen, Where did you find the Hitachi 7k200? I have been waiting for it to hit the market. Also, did you notice much of a performance gain? How about battery drain? Heat? Thanks

I have an SZ260P
2 gig Cosair Ram and T7600 processor

 

I found the Hitachi 7k200 drive at Mwave.com. As for performance gain going from 7k100 > 7k200, the noticeability of that will vary from person to person. For me, I do notice a bit of a difference. The battery drain seems about the same, its +/- since I comparing the 7k100 to 7k200 in the laptop. As for the heat, its actually a little cooler than the 7k100 drive.

I thought about swapping in a T7400 CPU but decided there was not much of a point since I already have the T2600, the Core 1 Duo 2.16GHz. I wouldn't see much of a increase in performance because I don't usually do CPU heavy tasks on my laptop.

As for actual performance benches, I posted a comparison on the hardware accessories portion of the forums... go to this link. Going to be adding 7k100 80gb bench and Samsung 250GB 5400rpm bench soon.

Notebookreview: Hitachi HDTune Benchmarks

 

Thank you Lyshen. Looks like I will be doing the Hitachi in the next few days.

http://www.barefeats.com/rosa05.html

 

Where did you locate a third antenna for the 4965agn? And did you just coil it up and stick it inside or run it around the chasis?

 

I purchased an antenna off Ebay. Placed the third antenna in the main body of the laptop... basically ran it around the chasis.

The B/G portion works fine as far as I can tell. I'll have to get a Draft-N wifi unit to actually be able to test the N portion. But unfortunately I haven't found one that I like yet. Trying to find one specifically that supports A/B/G/N, dual band (2.4 & 5 GHz) as well as a few more features.