Wifi for Lenovo Laptop

Daniel Staal DStaal at usa.net
Wed Aug 29 19:36:40 UTC 2012


On 2012-08-29 11:42, Chris wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I've tried to search the lists but can't find anything, but please
> point me to an existing resource if available.
>
> I recently got a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E530 (3259-9VG) laptop and
> would like to get the Wifi card running (fresh FreeBSD 9.0 install),
> but I'm failling as it has been at least 5 years since I used with
> wifi under FreeBSD. The card is not automatically detected (interface
> not listed in ifconfig) so I'm assuming I have to either load a 
> kernel
> module or go the NDIS path. It seems like on Windows, the same driver
> is used for E430, E435, E530 and E535, so in case anyone is using one
> of these models, please let me know if have things running.
>
> So some questions that might point me in the right direction:
>
> - How can I find out which type of card this laptop actually has (can
> I read it out of dmesg, some PCI listing or whatever)?
>   All I can find are product sheets saying that it has 11b/g/n, but
> doesn't help me to find a driver. I
>   Is there some "meta-module" that loads all the native wifi drivers
> that I can use that I can test?

There's a couple of different Wifi options for that machine, so which 
one you have may make a difference.  There looks to be some information 
on identifying which card you have here:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Wireless_Network_Adapters
(Though they don't have your model listed yet, I think it's a new 
model...)

I'm guessing you probably have a 'Thinkpad' card, which recently has 
been Realtek, but you'd have to check that.  Note that replacing it with 
a generic mini-PCI wireless card may not work: Lenovo has been known to 
have their BIOS only recognize 'official' replacement parts.

Daniel T. Staal

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