I have two old laptops: BenQ Joybook 5000U and IBM ThinkPad R31. The Joybook is a bit newer than the ThinkPad, but its construction proved to be quite weak, and literally fell apart. So I’ve decided to take the wireless card from the Joybook, and install it into the ThinkPad.
The screws on the bottom of the Joybook are mounted on metal washers embedded into the plastic. However, the plastic that was used became brittle. As a result, the metal washers came off the plastic, allowing parts of the case to be peeled open. Also, the laptop became rather unstable – at times, it can freeze into a state where there was a black screen with flickering characters. The ThinkPad, albeit older, still works reasonably. The only issue with it is, the Samsung LCD panel displays a noisy image on the screen. I’m guessing it’s a capacitor problem.
Anyway, I’ve opened it up and removed the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 3B miniPCI card, and placed it into the thinkpad’s miniPCI slot. The problem is, the ThinkPad does not have an antenna to connect to the wireless card. The only way to make it usable is if I put the antenna into the ThinkPad from the Joybook.
So off goes the screen, and revealed the wireless antenna. There is one of each on both the top corners of the screen.
I pulled it out, and stuck it in the ThinkPad. Since they’re not official parts, it doesn’t have a PCB to screw into the mount beside the screen. Instead, I’ve just placed them in a similar location at the back of the laptop panel:
When I start up the Joybook now, it no longer displays the Centrino logo, but just the Pentium M logo instead. The ThinkPad was quite happy with its new wireless card!