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I remember running into a similar issue with my W520. The WiFi card had died and, given that this is a simple mPCIe card, I simply ordered a replacement. Turns
by th0br0 11y ago
I remember running into a similar issue with my W520.
The WiFi card had died and, given that this is a simple mPCIe card, I simply ordered a replacement.
Turns out, Lenovo hard-codes the valid PCI IDs in the BIOS (some sources said it was for FCC compliance) and refuses to boot if you plug in an invalid card. In the end, I had to flash the BIOS with a cracked one I found somewhere on the web to get the system running again...
- fencepost 11y agoMany (most?) laptop vendors do this including Lenovo, HP, and Dell just as ones that turned up mentions with a quick search. I've been told that it's done because at least in theory they whitelist the cards that they've done emissions certification testing with and that they can't sell equipment that they haven't done that testing on - it may not be true, but it seems a pretty niche thing to try to do hardware lock-in on. One important factor in this is how large is the whitelist? If the manufacturer offers that model with 3-4 different cards as options, you know they'll all be supported. On the other hand for cheaper laptops (like a ThinkPad Edge I once had to deal with) that are non-customizable the whitelist may only have the one card model it was released with. For Lenovo models at least you can dig through their technical documentation and get a listing of part numbers that should be compatible.
- monksy 11y agoMSI did that. I tried to sub out a RealTek card with a good athenos. That was a bit frustrating and turned me off from buying from MSI.
- digi_owl 11y agoMSI in general seems to be all pain. Back during the netbook craze their take shipped a Suse install with missing drivers.