Internal USB port works!

I have a 3G WWAN card on my t410s that I never use. So I took it out and replaced it with a mini-PCIE to USB converter to create an internal USB port. Since mini-PCIE carries both SATA and USB signal, conversion is pretty easy. Only issue is the voltage but this card that I ordered also upconverts native 3.3v of the mini-PCIE to 5v of USB.

For now, I'm using it for my Logitech Unifying receiver so I don't have to plug anything into the notebook to use my trackman or the wireless keyboard. I personally find it pretty sweet.

Here is the image:


I ordered the mini-PCI-e to USB part from Taiwan ( http://www.hwtools.net/Adapter/PM3U.html). $15 each. They only ship via DHL so the shipping was steep! $18. I just ended up ordering a few so I can sell it on ebay for a bit more to recoup the cost of the card -- basically to spread out the cost of the shipping)

I DID have to flash the BIOS using a hacked 1.47 version that has the WAN/WWAN white-list removed to make it boot though. But it DOES beep 5 times...twice...whenever I turn my computer on. Bit annoying but I like the internal USB slot more. I did read through it a bit and I didn't find any easy way of turning that 5 beeps off. If anybody has a quick tip and you can let me know, I would appreciate it very much.

 

nice, it could be good for some people, or just something to do with the laptop.

 

Very nice. Can't all beeps be turned off in the BIOS?

 

I'd buy a ton of them for our company laptops if they didn't require a special BIOS. Moving the Logitech Unifying Receiver to be internal would be a nice touch for our users.

 

I love Thinkpads...but I kinda wish they really stop with the "white-listed" hardware only thing. I really like having the unifying receiver internally. And there is enough space to fit maybe a smaller 3G USB port...or a pretty large USB flash memory.

(I sent a note to Logitech to see if they would ever considering making a PC Express card based unifying receiver...that would solve your problem too. I doubt that they have that in the plans though)

I'll try that. It beeps 5 times (twice) before it even posts so I'm not sure if I can get rid of it. I know some of the guys that hack the bios also turn off the beeps too but I can't find one that does that.

 

I think someone did this on a Precision in the Dell forum, but pretty neat stuff.

 

That's a cool tweak! Thanks for letting us know about that.

If you can't turn off the beeps in the BIOS, maybe you can just physically disconnect the small internal speaker (don't know if there's one, or if the system uses the two "regular" speakers).

 

The link is broken. Where else can this card be found? (Nevermind, found it).

Will it work on my laptop and BIOS?

 

V chip, you should ask HP forum whether it will work, but given that HP also whitelist their bios, the probability of that working without a modified bios firmware is slim.

 

Another option to get around needing to whitelist the BIOS is to tape/paint over pin 20 on the card as this is the pin that signals the identity of the card and prevents boot up. If the BIOS doesn't see a illegal card it will let boot proceed and windows will see the card properly as it doesn't rely on pin 20 to id the card.

 

have you tested this? good find wherever you learned this lol

 

I tried the tape-the-pin-20 trick first. Didn't work on my Lenovo. Problem is, these converts don't take the entire mini-PCI-E signal. They only end up taking the USB portion of the mini-PCI-E signal. So there is a good chance pin 20 isn't even connected anyway.

They were $15 each...and $18 shipping. But I noticed you can order up to 3 without increasing the shipping charge. So I ended up paying $63 for 3 (shipped). I figured I can sell the two to make up some of the shipping code difference. If you want to buy one off of me, I'll sell them for $21 + shipping. ($63 divide by 3...) It's still cheaper than ordering from Taiwan directly -- but to be fair, they charge $18 for shipping because they only ship using DHL it seems like.

I noticed they changed their URL (and it's case sensitive):
PM3U ( MiniCard to USB2.0 Adapter)

 

Out of curiousity, do you know if using the Unifying reciever with this mini-PCI-E adapter uses more power than simply plugging it into the USB port?

 

In theory, it shouldn't make a difference. It is just using the USB lines already built-into the Mini-PCIe slot. Whether it's drawing power from the external USB or internal USB, it should be the same. It is converting the 3.3v into 5v...but even that shouldn't change much. It's not like the Unifying receiver uses up so much power.

I tend to run on battery about half the time. So I'll take a look and see if it makes a difference.

 

Nice work. +rep.

As for the beeps, consider wE had a 2510P user mike60 add a webcam by internally taping the unwhitelisted docking connector's USB lines. See details. Could have also taped the fingerprint reader's USB lines as an alternative.

Lenovo/HP whitelisting does quite a few checks so ensure the card is for comms and it's VID/PID are in the whitelist. The mod you've done would not work on a 2510P with or without the whitelisted bios.

 

Something like this? You could stick up to a 32 GB microSD in there. On the other hand, that company in Taiwan makes mini-PCIe adapters that directly offer microSD slots, no need to kludge in the USB adapter at all.