Draft-N Mini PCI Card??

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Flapjack

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Does anyone know if there a Draft N Mini PCI card available yet? I have a Dell XPS M170 and a that I want to connect at Draft N speeds. The router is a D-Link DIR-655.

Thanks in advance!
 
I believe they are available. My Thinkpad has a built in wireless ABGN and i am looking to get the Dlink DIR-655 router. What is your impression of the router?


You can also use Draft n cardbus or express cards (depending on your laptop's slot. LINK
 
TopGun said:
Don't know if this was what you were looking for but
here's what i found. Link
Click to expand...
That's Mini PCI-E, or express. The M170 only has Mini PCI. The M1710 has Mini PCI-E.

Thanks, though.

dandrop said:
I believe they are available. My Thinkpad has a built in wireless ABGN and i am looking to get the Dlink DIR-655 router. What is your impression of the router?

Ebay has these Draft N mini PCI for sale. Link

You can also use Draft n cardbus or express cards (depending on your laptop's slot. LINK
Click to expand...
I love the DIR-655. Very stable, feature-packed router. I did have some connectivity problems until I updated to the latest firmware. Everything's fine, now.

That link for Ebay isn't working, but the only ones I've seen on there are the ones that Top DOg posted.... Mini PCI-E. I've considered the PCMCIA solution, but I'd rather have something internal if it comes out soon.
 
Hi Flapjack,
Sorry for the bad links and wrong component suggestion. I'll edit the post and take out the ebay link.

I'm glad to hear that the DIR-655 is working great. I'm planning to order one as soon as it becomes in stock at frys. I had an older Dlink (624) that suffered from disconnects (even with the latest firmwares) and i'm hoping that the bugs have been worked out in the DIR-655. Thanks for the feedback!
 
dandrop said:
Hi Flapjack,
Sorry for the bad links and wrong component suggestion. I'll edit the post and take out the ebay link.

I'm glad to hear that the DIR-655 is working great. I'm planning to order one as soon as it becomes in stock at frys. I had an older Dlink (624) that suffered from disconnects (even with the latest firmwares) and i'm hoping that the bugs have been worked out in the DIR-655. Thanks for the feedback!
Click to expand...
Hey, no problem. You were trying to help, and that's what matters. I also had the DI-624. The disconnects are actually reboots. It gets overwhelmed and reboots all the freaking time. I finally got rid of that POS.

LOCO LAPTOP said:
I like to thank you for finding me one when if I wasnt really looking. :)

for $36.99 its cheap.
Click to expand...
Cool. I wish I had a Mini PCI-E card. I've actually considered selling my XPS M170 and getting an M1710 just for the slot. Not sure how much I'd lose, though...
 
are mini-pci cards hard to change out? my school is forcing me to get the Dell D620 rather than the new D630, thus I only have b/g when I'd rather have n included...

i take it they void your warranty if you switch them out?
 
Flapjack said:
Hey, no problem. You were trying to help, and that's what matters. I also had the DI-624. The disconnects are actually reboots. It gets overwhelmed and reboots all the freaking time. I finally got rid of that POS.


Cool. I wish I had a Mini PCI-E card. I've actually considered selling my XPS M170 and getting an M1710 just for the slot. Not sure how much I'd lose, though...
Click to expand...

Both of my laptops have Mini PCI-E :) And I have a DIR-655 and I have no problems with mine.
 
rayman2k2 said:
are mini-pci cards hard to change out? my school is forcing me to get the Dell D620 rather than the new D630, thus I only have b/g when I'd rather have n included...

i take it they void your warranty if you switch them out?
Click to expand...

Yes they are very easy to change if you can get your laptop open.

It would void your warranty if you broke any seals.
 
rayman2k2 said:
are mini-pci cards hard to change out? my school is forcing me to get the Dell D620 rather than the new D630, thus I only have b/g when I'd rather have n included...

i take it they void your warranty if you switch them out?
Click to expand...
Talk to Dell. I've done all sorts of stuff to my laptop, and my warranty was never voided. I had problems with the first Mini PCI NIC that came with my laptop. They sent me two different ones, but the problem never went away (dropped connections). I tried to tell them it was a design flaw, but they wouldn't listen until I tried replacing it with the same one. They finally sent me the next model up. Haven't had a problem since.

I also switched to a 120GB HDD, and added another gig of memory.

I had a problem (since day 1), where the SD reader wouldn't work. They had to swap out the motherboard. They never once questioned what I had done to the laptop.
 
Ok, I gutted a DIR-655 and pulled out the Mini-PCI card from inside the router. From what I can gather, it's based on the Atheros AR5008-3NG chipset.

I got the card install and connected to my network, but it's only connecting at 54g speeds... and it's a shitty connection at that (signal strength excellent, but throughput sucks).

I'm thinking the problem is either:

- My Dell M170 only has two antenna wires; primary and aux, while the card has three; 0, 1 and 2

or...

- The drivers I'm using (Atheros 6.03.85) don't have a lot of options. Maybe I need newer drivers. These are the most recent I could find.

Does anyone know if three antennae are absolutely required for a 802.11n connection?
 
I have no answers to you question but I'm interested in your results as it seems there are no MiniPCI Draft N cards out. Never thought to check inside a draft N router. I'm definitely curious if you will have any luck getting the card from inside the router to connect at N speeds and also am curious about the third antenna connection as my two laptops also have only two wires...
 
rayman2k2 said:
are mini-pci cards hard to change out? my school is forcing me to get the Dell D620 rather than the new D630, thus I only have b/g when I'd rather have n included...

i take it they void your warranty if you switch them out?
Click to expand...
forcing how? if you mean you can't get a school discount on the d630, how much can you save on the d620? if force just means some arbitrary rule, fuck them and get the d630. fuck rules. seriously. fuck them.

RoBo said:
It would void your warranty if you broke any seals.
Click to expand...
broken hymen???
 
MixManSC said:
I have no answers to you question but I'm interested in your results as it seems there are no MiniPCI Draft N cards out. Never thought to check inside a draft N router. I'm definitely curious if you will have any luck getting the card from inside the router to connect at N speeds and also am curious about the third antenna connection as my two laptops also have only two wires...
Click to expand...
I'm going to try some more tonight. I got a suggestion from Tim Higgins at SmallNetworkBuilder to try moving the two antennas to another pair of plugs. I'll mess around and see what happens.
 
Ok, after much experimentation, I found being limited to 54g had nothing to do with the number of antennae used. I realized this by taking the antenna wires from the DIR-655 and plugging them into the Atheros card in the bottom of my XPS M170. The XPS only has two antennae, so being able to plug the three from the router was all I needed to verify the drivers were the issue.

So I was at a bit of a loss. I had an 802.11n MiniPCI card that actually fit in my older laptop (new laptops use MiniPCI Express), but I didn't have the drivers to support it. Interestingly enough, the Atheros drivers were the newest, but wouldn't do the job.

Knowing that the router was a DLink, and they're advertised PCMCIA card to pair up with it probably had the same chipset, I decided to go to their site and check out the drivers.

The card DLink recommends for use with the DIR-655 is the DWA-652. I downloaded the "Vista beta drivers" located here and bam! I got a 300 mbps connection!

I did bunch of speed tests while I still had the three DIR-655 antennae connected, and am pleased to report I'm finally able to max out my cable connection. Before, I'd get 1000-1500 kbps over my 54g WPA connection (1500-2000 if I used WPA2). Now, I'm getting about 9000kbps!

The best part is, I disconnected the DIR-655 antennae and tried the two internal XPS antennae..... same speed!

If anyone else wants to try this, the only place I can find the card is inside the DLink DIR-655 router. I have yet to find a place that sells the Atheros card by itself.

Here is a site that shows the card itself and provides (really old) drivers.
http://www.sparklan.com/product_details.php?prod_id=148

Have fun!
 
Thanks for the info. Now I gotta see if I can get the DIR-655 for cheap somewhere. Maybe a broken one where the PC card still works might do the trick.
 
No problem. I'm a speed freak, so it was worth it for me. Hopefully another MiniPCI card will present itself. I'll get that and put the card back in the DIR-655 and sell it.
 
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