Old Ericsson F3507g 3G wwan card before removal
Intel wlan card and empty wusb slot. Note the out-of-focus spare antenna cable coming
MC7710 card mounted and all three antennas connected
The feared message. See http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_unauthorized_MiniPCI_network_card to find out how to get rid of this. Note that the new card must be removed first...
Upgrading the WLAN from N5300 to AC7620 was a no-brainer after the BIOS whitelist removal
Hirose U.FL (used with mini-PCIe modems) and I-PEX MHF4 (used with m.2 modems)
Connecting U.FL antenna to MHF4 pigtail via SMA is too bulky...
Female U.FL connectors are either surface mount or these SMA plugs
MHF4 to SMA pigtails are available, but the SMA connectors are too big to fit inside my X301
Too bad, because this would have been an easy way to connect the U.FL antenna cables to an m.2 modem
So let's take two pigtails and two U.FL surface mount connectors...
We want a pigtail connecting a female U.FL and a male MHF4
My soldering skills are not really up to this, but it kind of worked
Glueing the pigtails to the mini-PCIe to m.2 adapter to avoid stress on the U.FL surface mount contacts
Sierra Wireless EM7345 m.2 modem converted to mini-PCIe with U.FL contacts
Almost mounted in the X301. The antenna wiring is a tight fit
Final mounting of the m.2 EM7345
Next upgrade - now with a cat6 MC7455. Note that this requires taping over the PCIe pins since these are wired as USB3 on the MC7455