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I had to do a similar thing with my T530. I wanted to upgrade to a WiFi 6+Bluetooth card. The built in Bluetooth adapter is very old, I think v4.2. It's also a

I had to do a similar thing with my T530. I wanted to upgrade to a WiFi 6+Bluetooth card. The built in Bluetooth adapter is very old, I think v4.2. It's also a finicky module with a mezzanine connector, and it's nestled deeply into the internal magnesium frame so the range is abysmal. I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist, but I'm left with a bigger problem. The WiFi slot offers PCI, but not USB. The WWAN slot has USB, but not PCI. I ended up tapping into the original Bluetooth connector to steal the USB lines and route them back to the PCI connector. I had some issues at first with the device not enumerating reliably, but it eventually settled down. Now I have WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5. Unfortunately the WiFi frontend is extremely bad (it's a Chinese knockoff) and I have pretty bad signal strength even literally on top of the router. But it works well enough and my Bluetooth headphones now work more than 10ft away from the machine. The major problem is that the only WiFi 6 card available in mini PCIe is knockoff Intel AX210 cards. I suppose that's fair, mPCIe is basically obsolete these days. Unfortunately I don't have space for a M.2 or other adapter. Maybe I could build a custom express card

ssl-3 2y ago
Any advice on selecting a "good" AX210 card -- or perhaps avoiding a bad one? I understand that it may be a bit of a crapshoot, but I'd like to improve my odds of success if possible for my own T530. (Alternatively, the AX200 cards from the usual sources have a lot less of a back-alley Shenzhen feeling than the AX210 cards I've looked at. Perhaps that's a safer option.)
Rinzler89 2y ago
>I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist Still boggles my mind that people praise ThinkPads as an option for those looking for repairability and upgradability while casually talking about the built-in BIOS whitelist designed to block all that. To me that means an instant black ball. It's cool hackers are patching this out, but this anti-consumer feature should not be present in the first place in something people recommend.
- davisr 2y ago
  I run Libreboot on my ThinkPad and it works great.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  I have to wonder if there's a project for patching out this stupid, blatantly anticompetitive restriction from old ThinkPad firmwares. Especially with how many techies swear by these things.
  - dehugger 2y ago
    Yes, there is... that is literally what the GP did.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Lots of other laptops has the same whitelist annoyance, and are harder to tinker with. Lenovo is still nearly the least cumbersome even with this. Sony laptops were the worst: Sony has elitist culture when it comes to miniaturization and engineering excellence, which manifests as unsolderable gapless tiny solder pads in case with PCBs. Fujitsu is better: they love to get creative with their own testing criteria that results in excessively hot laptops that relies on keyboard typing surfaces as heatsinks. Toshiba designers seem to be smart and rational people who understands that no one cares if they double sided everything. Dell is just thick and heavy while not particularly durable and occasionally being annoying with proprietary accessories. HP seem to have every hardware and software imported into their ERP and that can be annoying sometimes like having HP-only bugs. ThinkPads don't have that kinds of things. They note on Hardware Maintenance Manual(HMM) that all removed screws must be discarded and replaced with their beautiful urethane coated and thread locked screws, and they still haven't made value of ~220 as default for `/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity`, and that's it.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >Lots of other laptops has the same whitelist annoyance Which other brands?

ssl-3 2y ago

Any advice on selecting a "good" AX210 card -- or perhaps avoiding a bad one? I understand that it may be a bit of a crapshoot, but I'd like to improve my odds of success if possible for my own T530. (Alternatively, the AX200 cards from the usual sources have a lot less of a back-alley Shenzhen feeling than the AX210 cards I've looked at. Perhaps that's a safer option.)

Rinzler89 2y ago

>I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist Still boggles my mind that people praise ThinkPads as an option for those looking for repairability and upgradability while casually talking about the built-in BIOS whitelist designed to block all that. To me that means an instant black ball. It's cool hackers are patching this out, but this anti-consumer feature should not be present in the first place in something people recommend.

davisr 2y ago
I run Libreboot on my ThinkPad and it works great.
kmeisthax 2y ago
I have to wonder if there's a project for patching out this stupid, blatantly anticompetitive restriction from old ThinkPad firmwares. Especially with how many techies swear by these things.
- dehugger 2y ago
  Yes, there is... that is literally what the GP did.
numpad0 2y ago
Lots of other laptops has the same whitelist annoyance, and are harder to tinker with. Lenovo is still nearly the least cumbersome even with this. Sony laptops were the worst: Sony has elitist culture when it comes to miniaturization and engineering excellence, which manifests as unsolderable gapless tiny solder pads in case with PCBs. Fujitsu is better: they love to get creative with their own testing criteria that results in excessively hot laptops that relies on keyboard typing surfaces as heatsinks. Toshiba designers seem to be smart and rational people who understands that no one cares if they double sided everything. Dell is just thick and heavy while not particularly durable and occasionally being annoying with proprietary accessories. HP seem to have every hardware and software imported into their ERP and that can be annoying sometimes like having HP-only bugs. ThinkPads don't have that kinds of things. They note on Hardware Maintenance Manual(HMM) that all removed screws must be discarded and replaced with their beautiful urethane coated and thread locked screws, and they still haven't made value of ~220 as default for `/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity`, and that's it.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >Lots of other laptops has the same whitelist annoyance Which other brands?