Mini-PCIe to USB dongle card. Anybody tried one of these?

[Christian Wacker]

Part of the Mini-PCIe standard is USB on a few of the pins. I was contemplating one of these for my laptop + a OSX compatible WiFi card to add WiFi to my laptop when in OSX, but I’m wary of spending the remaining part of my budget on something that might not work.

Has anyone used one of these devices? http://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-PCI-E-Adapter/dp/B008LWLH60/ref=pd_sim_sbs_pc_8

If so, what were your successes\failures that you encountered while using it? I think that HP wired up the WAN card in my laptop as USB only (Won’t even see a standard WiFi card in the slot), so one of these dongles just might work.

It also seems to have a voltage stepper to up the 3.3v to 5V for USB, so it should hopefully be stable to use.

 

Thanks for the input

[Christopher Satterfield]

I haven't used one before, but I can vouch for the fact that the WWAN slots are usually USB signal only. I see one downside to this, and that's you're going to need a good amount of clearance between the slot and bottom of the laptop or keyboard to use it with anything actually in that port, my laptop has the Bluetooth card, Wireless card and WWAN card, all almost touching the bottom of the laptop.

[pete...@cruzio.com]

The card is PCI-e 1x to USB 2.0/1.1.

It appears that it will accept a thin WLAN dongle, most probably of the
ZyDas 1211b type.

Alas, most do NOT provide for an external antenna, although I have seen a
user modification which does.

[Christian Wacker]

I did some digging in one of my less interesting classes today and
discovered that HP's own enterprise spec sheets state that the WWAN card
that shipped with the laptop is indeed USB only. I've also done some looking
and think that I could successfully cram a small USB WiFi dongle in there,
especially if I strip the casing and wrap it in heatshrink or tape. I could
trim off a few extra MM by stripping the USB socket and plug, and soldering
direct, but that may be going to the extreme. All depends on how much space
I have and where I can fit it.

Just did a test fit of a device where the plug would be, and with a Logitech
Micro-receiver dongle, it seems to fit just fine where the USB port would be
located. I was also able to successfully fit a SanDisk Cruzer flash drive
into the space and still close the back panel, albeit with a minimal amount
of bulging. If I get a larger WiFi dongle, I may have to strip the plastics
from it to get it to fit better, and will definitely insulate it. Modifying
to use the WWAN antenna may be necessary, but probably not.

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[Pizzaboy192]

Forgot to mention:
The only thing that is currently preventing me from just dropping $15 on one of these is I'm not sure how locked down HP made the WWAN USB port. They may scan it for Product\Vendor ID's and blacklist those that aren't HP, or they may just accept anything since it's a USB port and less likely to be taken advantage of.
If I had $15 (plus WiFi card cost) of disposable cash, I'd try it.

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[pete...@cruzio.com]

> Modifying
> to use the WWAN antenna may be necessary, but probably not.

External antenna kits are pretty good.

The particular modification for the ZyDas (now Atheros) 1211b card was to
install a R-SMC connector.

If so, then a R-SMC (internal) to R-SMC (external) cable would be required.

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> Forgot to mention:
> The only thing that is currently preventing me from just dropping $15 on
> one of these is I'm not sure how locked down HP made the WWAN USB port.
> They may scan it for Product\Vendor ID's and blacklist those that aren't
> HP, or they may just accept anything since it's a USB port and less likely
> to be taken advantage of.
> If I had $15 (plus WiFi card cost) of disposable cash, I'd try it.

Just use a generic kext for whichever WLAN card you install.

[Christian Wacker]

I could probably do that, and change the PID\VID to what HP is looking for,
and then modify the PID\VID in the kext. Too bad these sorts of dongles are
few and far between, otherwise there'd be plenty of information from people
who have tried them.

-----Original Message-----
From: hq...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hq...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
pete...@cruzio.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 13:39
To: hq...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HQ-A] Mini-PCIe to USB dongle card. Anybody tried one of
these?

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[Christopher Satterfield]

I think the question was how BIOS locked down the HPs are. I remember that HP and IBM were huge on locking down wireless cards and stuff. While I can say the wireless is more than likely locked down, I don't own an HP with a WWAN slot to test it out for you.

--
C:\win
Bad Command Or File Name
C:\

[Christian Wacker]

It appears they locked down the HP Mini 110 series’ WWAN slot, but I don’t know about my laptop until I extract the BIOS and dig around for a bit. If I discover a BIOS lockout, I may be able to unlock it using the method that is posted on the HP Mini 110 forums, but it all depends on what kind of lockout it is doing.

I know the WiFi card slot is locked, because it won’t accept my old Mini 110’s card.

 

 

From: hq...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hq...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Satterfield
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 14:21
To: hq...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HQ-A] Mini-PCIe to USB dongle card. Anybody tried one of these?

 

I think the question was how BIOS locked down the HPs are. I remember that HP and IBM were huge on locking down wireless cards and stuff. While I can say the wireless is more than likely locked down, I don't own an HP with a WWAN slot to test it out for you.

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[Christopher Satterfield]

Just curious, is there any patches for this? I believe it was Thinkpad T31s we patched at one time to use a Broadcom Wireless G card in rather than the Intel Wireless B card.

[Christian Wacker]

I’m not sure for my laptop. It’s one of those one-off ones that HP made few of and subsidized to wireless carriers to sell 4G data plans. I got it used\refurbed for just over $200. It runs OSX rather well, but just doesn’t have WiFi.

 

From: hq...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hq...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Satterfield
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 14:31
To: hq...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HQ-A] Mini-PCIe to USB dongle card. Anybody tried one of these?

 

Just curious, is there any patches for this? I believe it was Thinkpad T31s we patched at one time to use a Broadcom Wireless G card in rather than the Intel Wireless B card.

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[Christopher Satterfield]

It appears there IS in fact a hack around this, as shown here:

http://myhpmini.com/forum/mini-110-bios-wwan-wifi-bluetooth-whitelist-hack-t1490.html

[Christian Wacker]

Same forum that I was looking at. Grabbed the tools to discover that my HP laptop doesn’t use an AMI BIOS. Going to check what BIOS it is later. It’s either Insyde or Phoenix. Both seem to be just as easy to hack, and as easy to recover from a bad flash. Just had to have it all set ahead of time, and probably do it on a weekend when I won’t need my laptop (just incase I break something bigtime)

 

From: hq...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hq...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Satterfield
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 14:52
To: hq...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [HQ-A] Mini-PCIe to USB dongle card. Anybody tried one of these?

 

It appears there IS in fact a hack around this, as shown here:

http://myhpmini.com/forum/mini-110-bios-wwan-wifi-bluetooth-whitelist-hack-t1490.html

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[Kris Tilford]

On Oct 10, 2012, at 2:28 PM, Christian Wacker wrote:

> It appears they locked down the HP Mini 110 series’ WWAN slot, but I
> don’t know about my laptop until I extract the BIOS and dig around
> for a bit. If I discover a BIOS lockout, I may be able to unlock it
> using the method that is posted on the HP Mini 110 forums, but it
> all depends on what kind of lockout it is doing.
> I know the WiFi card slot is locked, because it won’t accept my old
> Mini 110’s card.

Isn't there a reverse tack where where you flash the WiFi card BIOS to
match the lockout PID & VID, and then add these PID & VID to whatever
OS X kext drives that chipset? I'm pretty certain this method will
work for Broadcom chipset cards.

[Christian Wacker]

Tried this. HP only connected the USB pins on the WWAN slot in my laptop. I want to keel my current wireless card because it is an N/BT3.0 combo card, and I use both daily, which is why I want to use the wwan slot for a secondary card. May just have to settle with an external card.

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[Pizzaboy192]

Progress!
I found out that my laptop's BIOS is an Insyde brand. A little bit of Google-fu and I found a nice forum link on how to modify the bios to accept any and all cards in either slot. I will attempt this later this week when I have access to my stash of mini-PCI-e cards when I am home over break. Hopefully it'll work the way that I want it to and I'll be able to run tandem wireless cards in my laptop. If it doesn't work right, I will still have a modified BIOS in my laptop that I can then slap odd dongles into and make it work the way that I want to.
I'm currently seriously tempted to hack up an old USB Hub to fit a micro WiFi dongle and my mouse dongle into the same chassis space. I'll keep you posted if I decide to do this. (I'd also love to try putting USB ports on the edge of my display, but I'll save that for when I've replaced my laptop with something else and no longer need it every day.)