Adding internal Wi-Fi

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vortec4800

Gawd
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Sep 19, 2003
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I've got a Toshiba Satellite 5105-607 and I was wondering if I could purchase a module from Toshiba that adds 802.11b/g to my laptop. I've currently got a PCMCIA card for wireless, but I'd much rather have it built in so I don't have something sticking out the side all the time. There seems to be a little expansion spot in the bottom where something like this could go, I just don't know if Toshiba actually ever realsed it or where to buy it.
 
yeah, but you'll get crappy wireless connections without an internal antenna. Btw, not a big fan of Intel's wireless cards either, but...

check to make sure you have a mini-PC slot on the bottom of your Satellite. I've got an A40 and yes, it does have one.

cheers,

dave
 
problem is, on Toshiba lappys, they run the antennae through the backside of the LCD panel.

soooooo, you'll have to make do with either trying to coil an antennae or...

be careful of retrofitting something like that in there. You can void your warranty (i'm a toshiba reseller, btw.)

cheers,

dave
 
Pictures:

laptop1.jpg

laptop2.jpg
 
MisterDNA said:
I have the parts you need. Fresh from a Toshiba Tecra 8200.
Click to expand...

What, exactly, are the parts I need? I realize I don't have an antenna, what options do I have for that? How bad will the reception be if I just use one of the cards off Newegg, isn't that how they're designed to be used? Most laptops that you would add an internal Wi-Fi card will not already have an antenna, so how do they adress this?
 
show me one of those cards.

The pieces I have are:
base to mini-pci slot dual coaxial cable
base to lcd dual coaxial cable
coupler for use between the cables
twin wifi panel antennas for mounting behind the LCD

You will have to open your laptop but the range afforded by an internal solution versus a card is worth it. Not to mention the cleaner look.
 
Do you or anyone else have instructions on how to dissassemble the laptop to put that in? I don't really have a problem tearing it apart, but its the tearing that worries me... :p

Anyway if there's some type of tutorial or service manual or anything that would be awesome.

How much do you want for all the peices?
 
I've been into my A15-S1292 twice now. I had a mini-pci bay, but no antennas. So I got a u.fl to rp-tnc pigtail from http://www.netgate.com. I had a convenient blank in the back panel where an s-video port wasn't, so I dremeled that out and soldered in the rp-tnc and ran the u.fl / hirose connector back into the mini-pci bay. I screwed a 5db rubber ducky antenna onto the rp-tnc and called it good. Awesome connectivity.

Dissasembly was tricky, but I went at it slow, and never ended up with any leftover or missing parts. Most of the screws should have a label near the hole telling you what kind (F5, F16, B4, etc) it is. There will be a couple that don't though, for those make sure you match 'em up with their brothers and put them in the right pile and note what kind goes in that hole. Start at the bottom, take off all the covers, take the battery out, then undo all the screws. You should be able to loosen the two halves of the case (top and bottom) now, but you'll probably have to take out some screws on the topside to get them completely apart. I had to remove a dark plastic cover at the top edge of the keyboard to expose some screws. Some screws there were holding one end of the keyboard down. Undid those and removed the keyboard. More screws. Undid those, and I could get the two halves to seperate, though there was still the connector from the lcd plugged into the motherboard, and two connectors for the speakers, too. Undid those, and got the top half of the case with the lcd attached off. More screws exposed holding the motherboard to the bottom of the case. Undid those and got the motherboard out, undid the i/o shield, drilled a hole in it, soldered in the rp-tnc connector, ran the cable, and reversed the disassembly process.

Unless you have a *really* good memory and are going to do it over one or two days, draw diagrams and / or take pictures. Don't take it apart and then wait a week to put it back together unless you have pictures or something. Don't force anything. If something doesn't come out / apart, don't force it, look for more screws. Be careful with the ribbon cables on the keyboard and touchpad. Don't tear them. There are two tiny little catches on the connectors where each cable goes into the motherboard. Release those with the edge of a common screwdriver bit or your fingernails and you can pull the end of the ribbon cable out. Note how those darn things were folded. You'll probably have to take the hard drive out. There was a screw hiding under the cover over the hd bay on mine, too. There were also screws hiding around the cpu heatsink/heatpipe assembly. So I took all that out, too. Left the cpu in the socket though.

If you've got a good spot somewhere where you can drill a hole and shove an rp-tnc connector through, I wouldn't screw with trying to take the lcd apart. I didn't see any screws and I'm not sure what's holding that whole assembly together. I think you'd getter better reception with a proper external antenna, too. Good stuff here: http://www.techimo.com/forum/t91182.html. Search here at the [H]ardForum for other posts of mine, too. I can put up some pictures I took of mine, I started of snapping them every few steps, but got bored
pretty quick. But they show you what exactly I was up to...
 
rltvstc said:
I've been into my A15-S1292 twice now. I had a mini-pci bay, but no antennas. So I got a u.fl to rp-tnc pigtail from http://www.netgate.com. I had a convenient blank in the back panel where an s-video port wasn't, so I dremeled that out and soldered in the rp-tnc and ran the u.fl / hirose connector back into the mini-pci bay. I screwed a 5db rubber ducky antenna onto the rp-tnc and called it good. Awesome connectivity.

Dissasembly was tricky, but I went at it slow, and never ended up with any leftover or missing parts. Most of the screws should have a label near the hole telling you what kind (F5, F16, B4, etc) it is. There will be a couple that don't though, for those make sure you match 'em up with their brothers and put them in the right pile and note what kind goes in that hole. Start at the bottom, take off all the covers, take the battery out, then undo all the screws. You should be able to loosen the two halves of the case (top and bottom) now, but you'll probably have to take out some screws on the topside to get them completely apart. I had to remove a dark plastic cover at the top edge of the keyboard to expose some screws. Some screws there were holding one end of the keyboard down. Undid those and removed the keyboard. More screws. Undid those, and I could get the two halves to seperate, though there was still the connector from the lcd plugged into the motherboard, and two connectors for the speakers, too. Undid those, and got the top half of the case with the lcd attached off. More screws exposed holding the motherboard to the bottom of the case. Undid those and got the motherboard out, undid the i/o shield, drilled a hole in it, soldered in the rp-tnc connector, ran the cable, and reversed the disassembly process.

Unless you have a *really* good memory and are going to do it over one or two days, draw diagrams and / or take pictures. Don't take it apart and then wait a week to put it back together unless you have pictures or something. Don't force anything. If something doesn't come out / apart, don't force it, look for more screws. Be careful with the ribbon cables on the keyboard and touchpad. Don't tear them. There are two tiny little catches on the connectors where each cable goes into the motherboard. Release those with the edge of a common screwdriver bit or your fingernails and you can pull the end of the ribbon cable out. Note how those darn things were folded. You'll probably have to take the hard drive out. There was a screw hiding under the cover over the hd bay on mine, too. There were also screws hiding around the cpu heatsink/heatpipe assembly. So I took all that out, too. Left the cpu in the socket though.

If you've got a good spot somewhere where you can drill a hole and shove an rp-tnc connector through, I wouldn't screw with trying to take the lcd apart. I didn't see any screws and I'm not sure what's holding that whole assembly together. I think you'd getter better reception with a proper external antenna, too. Good stuff here: http://www.techimo.com/forum/t91182.html. Search here at the [H]ardForum for other posts of mine, too. I can put up some pictures I took of mine, I started of snapping them every few steps, but got bored
pretty quick. But they show you what exactly I was up to...
Click to expand...

Looks very interesting, pretty much exactly what I'm trying to do. If you could post pictures of how to take the laptop apart that would be great, just what I need. Does the new antenna stick out the back then, and is it very intrusive? That's what I'm trying to avoid, so are there any other antenna types that would work? What about those small Dell antennas? How well do they work?
 
vortec4800 said:
Looks very interesting, pretty much exactly what I'm trying to do. If you could post pictures of how to take the laptop apart that would be great, just what I need. Does the new antenna stick out the back then, and is it very intrusive? That's what I'm trying to avoid, so are there any other antenna types that would work? What about those small Dell antennas? How well do they work?
Click to expand...

Well, the way I did mine, the RP-TNC connector sticks out the back, next to the USB ports. Pretty it isn't, but it gets the job done. The antenna doesn't get in the way of using the laptop, but I do take it off when I'm not using it. The first time I had the laptop apart, I just superglued the RP-TNC to the I/O shield. I had it back together for like 2 hours before I ran into something with it and snapped it loose. Took it apart again and soldered the sucker. It hasn't budged since. But, like I said, I unscrew the antenna when I'm not using it, too.

I do think Toshiba shipped a laptop from the factory with a small rubber ducky style sticking out on the left side. I'm not sure what type of connector, but I think it came off, too. I saw one at CompUSA once.

Pictures are at:

http://www.relativistic.net/a15/

Pardon my crappy photography. My spray paint skillz suck too. And I got tired of taking pictures about half way in. So there aren't any of me getting the motherboard away from the lower half. The blacked out bits are serial numbers and product keys and MAC addresses.

If you want a less intrusive antenna, maybe this:

http://www.netgate.com/Images/ant/8_dBi_Patch_large.jpg

will do. Glue it to the lid maybe? You'd probably need to lop off the existing connector and attach some sort of u.fl pigtail, but then you'd only need to drill a tiny hole in your case.
 
One could have the best of both worlds with an RP-TNC connector from one U-FL and the other u-fl running to an internal antenna for all-in-one usage. But I don't know how well wifi works with just one internal antenna since I've never tried it.

But, like it was said, you may not want to open your LCD. But it is worth letting you know that the way to get in is usually via screws on the sides of the display lid that are covered with little rectangular stickers. And the inside of the display usually tells you where to route the cables. It's molded into the shell
 
has anyone done this with a Dell inspiron 8200? Im getting one of those in a week or two and I'm going to be needing to install a wireless card. Ive also heard that external gets better reception vs internal on those, could someone confirm/deny? Thnaks.
 
phire said:
has anyone done this with a Dell inspiron 8200? Im getting one of those in a week or two and I'm going to be needing to install a wireless card. Ive also heard that external gets better reception vs internal on those, could someone confirm/deny? Thnaks.
Click to expand...

I've done it with my 8100.. I am using a broadcom minipci b/g card.

I swiped the antenna from a toshiba laptop. Internal works great. I ran cables into the screen section.
 
I was wondering if the reverse was possible. if I can stick a minipci G card into my B router (dlink 614+). I have a bunch (10-15) dell truemobile 1300 mini pci cards laying around not doing anything.
 
Tlafeir said:
I was wondering if the reverse was possible. if I can stick a minipci G card into my B router (dlink 614+). I have a bunch (10-15) dell truemobile 1300 mini pci cards laying around not doing anything.
Click to expand...

Any idea if one of those cards will work in my Toshiba, or only a Dell? Perhaps you could send/sell me one of those? :p
 
any idea on a part number or anywhere I could find the Toshiba internal antenna?

I'm always looking to boost my wireless signal.
 
there are two internal antenna panels. I'll see if I can get the numbers. You also need the coax cables and junction panel.
 
phire said:
has anyone done this with a Dell inspiron 8200? Im getting one of those in a week or two and I'm going to be needing to install a wireless card. Ive also heard that external gets better reception vs internal on those, could someone confirm/deny? Thnaks.
Click to expand...

You most certainly can! I have a Cisco Aironet 350 802.11b card in my 8200. You won't even need to buy the antenna as Dell made the Wi-Fi antenna a part of the system board. It'll be taped to the inside of the empty mini-PCI area. All you gotta do then is just snap the antenna on the card and you're all set. Dell is about the ONLY Laptop maker that I know of that keeps their Wi-Fi Antennae in the base of the notebook, the only exception being the Latitude X300/300m. Just about every other of their notebooks I've had torn open (and my service manuals) keep the Wi-Fi antennae in the base either as part of the bottom plastics, or as part of the mainboard.
 
vortec4800 said:
Any idea if one of those cards will work in my Toshiba, or only a Dell? Perhaps you could send/sell me one of those? :p
Click to expand...

I had a Truemobile 1300 in my A15 for a while till I swapped it out for an Intel 2200BG. Worked fine, but I had to do the usual 'tape pin 13' trick.
 
Mr_Evil said:
You most certainly can! I have a Cisco Aironet 350 802.11b card in my 8200. You won't even need to buy the antenna as Dell made the Wi-Fi antenna a part of the system board. It'll be taped to the inside of the empty mini-PCI area. All you gotta do then is just snap the antenna on the card and you're all set. Dell is about the ONLY Laptop maker that I know of that keeps their Wi-Fi Antennae in the base of the notebook, the only exception being the Latitude X300/300m. Just about every other of their notebooks I've had torn open (and my service manuals) keep the Wi-Fi antennae in the base either as part of the bottom plastics, or as part of the mainboard.
Click to expand...

Awesome. Thanks dude.
 
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