Hello all and thanks for taking the time to read this,

Recently i bought a new laptop, an Acer Travelmate 4202WLMi, the laptop comes with the Intel Pro Wireless 3945 a/b/g mini-pci-e card. its this super small wifi card, about the size of a stamp. I bought an upgrade to this card, so i would be able to use the wifi in OSX, the Atheros AR5006EX chipset, in a card manufactured by PCD Global (only other company currently making pci-express wifi cards. EDIT: THIS IS NOW A LIE, SEE POST #2)


When i installed this new card everything worked fine except for the RF/Radio kill switch, it remains permanently 'off' and the led never comes on. Other than this the driver installed fine, and i could even run the diagnostics tools which came with the driver, that had a troubleshooting section. When i run the troubleshooting it says that the card is detected and the driver is fine, and everything else is fine EXCEPT that the card is "Hardware Disabled", but the radio switch does not help me at all!!!!

So, i've done alot of research on this topic and found a few interesting things. The first thing was a guide for mini-pci cards having the same problem:
http://rfswitch.sourceforge.net/?page=laptop_matrix
Under an older acer model, the fix specifies to: "Get some tape to isolate pins 11 and 13 (these are right next to the antennas' contacts) which are really pins 6 and 7 because the pins' numbering is done alternating sides on the card."

So i decided to lookup what these pins actually do, which is when i found this: http://www.interfacebus.com/MiniPCI_Pinout_124Pin.html
Which specifies pins 11 and 13 as being:
11- LED1_GRNP Interface for external LEDs
13- LED1_GRNN RF Silent input
Which makes a whole lot of sense! So i decided to lookup a pinnout for the newer wireless cards, namely the one i have, the PCI-Express mini card, and i found this document:
http://rm-f.net/~orange/devel/specificatio...mini_cem_10.pdf
which is the pci-sig definitions of how this card is supposed to opperate. I looked in this document and found the pinouts (page 31, section 3-3)
edit: "perhaps this link is more usefull.."
This is where im stuck, theres now 3 pins that control the led, and others that perhaps control the RF, but im not sure. Theres nothing that directly says its for the RF kill switch, expect pin #1 which is WAKE#, presumeably takes the card out of sleep mode.

The other problem is that this version of PCI-Sig is old, and the up to date version costs $150 on their website, its possible perhaps taht the pinout definitions have changed.

Any help is greatly appreciated!
-Dre

Nobody eh? Well im thinking of abondoning hope, so perhaps oneday if someone searches this forum before buying this card i might have helped them...

I found another PCI-E solution, that will definetly work in OSX, possibly not in linux... but we'll see.
Its the Broadcom BCM4311:


Unfortuneatly the only one i can find is marketed for Dell computers, so im unsure whether or not i will still have the same problem with the toggel switch. But what they heck, worth a try i guess. Somebody has to waste their money to figure out what works/doesn't work

-Dre

Does this problem occur in Windows or in OSX only? A friend of mine substituted his Intel with a Gigabyte, but he hadn't this problem.

Well... at the time i was testing it my OSX install was dead, so i was only testing with windows. Your friend, which laptop does he/she have and which Gigabyte card did they use? was it pci-express?

I asked him and he told me that it is a minipci, not a minipci express. His laptop is an ASUS (I don't remember the model)

djtrix - where did you get your card?

only place I can find it is at
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=250032222715

Did you ever gets yours working?

Update - I saw your post at
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...st&p=111916

Is the card still working well for you?
What version of OSX are you running?

Thanks

Update - I came across an article which said "Apple has so far used the Broadcom BCM4311 and Atheros AR5000 Series (AR5006EX) wireless chipsets"
See - http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0608airportexpress.html

Hi,

same problem on my Acer Aspire 5612Wlmi, I tried with Gigabyte GN-WI01GT that is Atheros chip.

Under Osx led become on and the card is recognized like an Airport but if i try to connect to any network I got Kernel Panic.

For solve the problem under Windows Xp I believe we need to modify the bios, probabily we can find Prod ID and Ven id somewhere...

Ciao Piero ,
i got the same lap as ur, and Im veru intersted about change the mini-pci, have any link to suggest me for learnig wich tools nedd to do that??

thanks for ur time.

Anybody gotten the GN-WI01GT to work fully?

I found a PDF file regarding MiniPCI-E cards. It says pin 20 is W_Disable and appears to be similar to pin 13 on a MiniPCI card. I'm going to try taping over the pin on my Dell 1490 and see if it still hardware disabled.
http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciex...Changes_ECN.pdf

It worked! I'm typing this from MacOS using my Dell 1490 Mini PCI-e card!

Hey, how did you do it? I've got the same problem, but with a Toshiba Satellite and a genuine Apple Airport (mini pci-e). Could you tell how to do the "pin 20" trick? Thanx.

Thanks so much for that! I've an Acer TravelMate 4202WLMi and after I took out the 3945ABG card, replacing it with a Dell DW 1390 (with pin 20 masked) here I am in Leopard, wirelessly writing this!


I basically cut a thin strip of electrical tape and stuck it over pin 20

Im having a little problem finding the 20 pin, could you explain me better how to find it? Thank you!

(looking to the card from top, pins on the right side,)

|-
|-
...
|-
|-
(this is space between pins)
|-
|- pin 20 <
|-
|-
...
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-

but it didnt help me on atheros device 001c (5007eg?) i still get Hal status 13 cannot attach hardware blah blah.. it seems like im going to buy a new minipcie card (fvck acer (as a note )

i also have a travelmate 4202 with a gigabyte GN-WI06N and have tried all the recomendations for fixing the switch problem. i tried masking pin 20 and nothing worked. when i boot into windows the card installs all the drivers fine but the device wont be enabled. osx sees the card an an airport but it says that is disabled. does any one have any advice? im sure it has something to do with the switch but so far no hardware hack has helped....help please

pin#20 - on the same place, but on the back side of card - and little piece of scotch tape on the pin#20 turn my Dell1490 minicard ON