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    Calling all E1705 gurus - Intel WiMAX/WiFi 5350 minicard upgrade possible?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by gaah, Oct 13, 2009.

  1. gaah

    gaah Notebook Deity

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    So I live in Portland Oregon, the WiMAX capitol in the US, and just bought a brand new Intel 5350 mini-card adapter to replace my aging Intel 3945abg. The card installed fine hardware wise, everyhing looks good in the BIOS, and WiFi works perfectly, but not WiMAX. I read around the Internet and found out about the minicard interface and 5350 - The minicard interface has two types of "bussses" one is ExpressCard type and the other is USB. The 5350 uses the PCI Express 1x port for WiFi and USB for WiMAX. Apparently not all minicard slots have this USB part. Is the E1705 one of them? Some others suggested that there's also a type of minicard bus that's bot the USB one but it's labeled for memory module use only, I don't see one of those slots, then again I haven't gone far in enough to examine the motherboard yet.

    Intel WiFi/WiMAX minicards, yay or nay?
     
    gaah, Oct 13, 2009
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  2. aidil

    aidil Notebook Evangelist

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    Yup, that combo WiMAX/WiFi card will only work on mini PCIe slot which has embedded USB lines. It could be one of the following: the 3G card slot (labeled WWAN), Flash Cache Module slot (labeled FCM) or Bluetooth/Ultra Wide Band card slot (labeled WPAN/UWB).

    Looking at its Service Manual, seems like your E1705 only has 1 mini PCIe card slot, so you're out of luck with the WiMAX/WiFi combo card.
     
    aidil, Oct 13, 2009
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