Does the Thinkpad R40 come with wireless?

[mallik]

Hi, this may be a stupid question, but I was working on a Thinkpad R40 and I was trying to get the wireless network to work. I looked in the device manager, and there's no wireless network adapter listed there. I called IBM support, but I'm not sure the guy knew what he was talking about. He was saying something about miniPCI upgradeable or something like that. Does the R40 come with wireless? Because I thought that was the whole thing with Centrino, is that it is wireless. If it does have wireless, how can I get it to work? Thanks

 

[aakerman]

If it has the centrino-sticker on it, it comes with a wireless NIC... If it doesn't work, try updating the ibm Access Connections software, along with the driver for the wireless NIC.

 

[mallik]

Thanks, that's what I was hoping to hear. I messed around with it before, downloading things off the IBM website, but they have a few different wireless cards, and I'm not sure which one is in this system. What does the Access Connections do anyway?

 

[aakerman]

a lot of things.. it serves as sort of a manager of your network connections.. probably does other things too, that I'm not aware of.

If your notebook has the centrino-sticker, and is over a couple of months old, it comes with the Intel 2100B wireless adapter (802.11b) - if it came with the IBM a/b/g wireless NIC, it would not have the centrino sticker.

 

[mallik]

I checked the laptop...it doesn't have a centrino sticker, but it has a Pentium-M sticker. Does that mean it's centrino? I thought Pentium-M processors only came with centrino notebooks. Since there was no centrino sticker, I tried to install the a/b/g drivers, but I got an error. I also checked a slot on the bottom of the laptop (I think it was the miniPCI slot). The slot was empty but there were two wires there. Does this mean I'm outta luck or is it possible the wireless fuctionality is integrated into the system board?

 

[Frightcrawler]

Not quite, many manufacturers put in the wireless card as an optional component.
If you opened the miniPCI slot, and it was empty, chances are that you don't have a wireless card.

 

[aakerman]

Haha.. you probably don't have wireless then - which is weird, I thought all R40s came with wireless.
Centrino just means, that the computer contains an intel 855 motherboard, the pentium-m cpu and an intel wireless NIC. So if a computer comes with all three things, except the wireless NIC is not made by Intel, it can't be called a centrino.

Anyways - look at the bottom of your computer, there should be a model number - like 2373-GGU - look that number up on the IBM website, and you can see exactly what hardware your notebook contains.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: mallik
I checked the laptop...it doesn't have a centrino sticker, but it has a Pentium-M sticker. Does that mean it's centrino? I thought Pentium-M processors only came with centrino notebooks. Since there was no centrino sticker, I tried to install the a/b/g drivers, but I got an error. I also checked a slot on the bottom of the laptop (I think it was the miniPCI slot). The slot was empty but there were two wires there. Does this mean I'm outta luck or is it possible the wireless fuctionality is integrated into the system board?

For starters... you can have just a Pentium M sticker and still have wireless... or not... It may not be a centrino (with the Intel Wireless card), but may have a Cisco card or other flavor in there.

You may just have a Pentium M with "wireless ready" meaning that you have an open slot where the mini pci wireless card should be. You will still have the battery savings though.

Another trick is to look at the bottom of the notebook. If it came from production with both wired and wireless, you will find two separate stickers with both the wired and wireless adapter's MAC addresses.

If you don't have the card...... chances are you do have the antenaes already there and ready for a card... simply inspect your display edges and you will find two sets of hash marks on the top left and right corners of the screen - those will be the ant's.