Dell Inspiron 1420 upgraded from Intel 3945ABG to 4965AGN
Well, we have a Dell Inspiron 1420 [did i mention that before? :)]………. and when we purchased it back in Nov ‘07, it came with an Intel 3945ABG WiFi card. The Intel 3945ABG card supports speeds of upto 54 Mbps (802.11g). Its good for accessing the internet, but its slow when you do file transfers between nodes on the local network.
So.., over the past week, upgraded our home network…which involved:
1. Replacing my old D-Link DI-524 router with an 802.11n router
2. And replacing the WiFi Card on the laptop with an 802.11n capable card (Intel 4965AGN WiFi Link card).
Linksys WRT600N Router
For #1, I purchased a Linksys WRT600N router — which is a wireless-N gigabit dual-band router, with storage link — which means, you can connect a USB drive to it, and that drive would be available on your network! (kind of like network attached storage - NAS). So, now, my 750GB Seagate external drive is plugged into it, and all its partitions are now accessible wirelessly as a shared folders!
Intel 4965AGN mini-express card
For #2, here is what I did …
- Confirmed with the Dell tech support that my laptop was indeed upgradeable.
- Purchased a Intel 4965AGN mini-express card. Now, here is the thing - you can buy this card from dell.com - which would cost you around $80+tax+shipping, or you can get it from any third party website. I got it from buy.com (or amazon.com), where it was available for around $33 shipped! (yes… thats how dell rips you!)
- The WiFi card on the Dell Inspiron 1420 is below the keyboard. So, you need to remove the keyboard. There is a Service Manual on the dell website which tells you how to replace the WiFi Card. It was pretty simple. In some laptops of other brands (or other dell models), the card is at the bottom of the laptop and is much easier to access.
- Briefly, here is how you do it:
- Shutdown you laptop, remove the batteries and ground yourself. Once the battery is remove, press the power button on the laptop to ground the motherboard of your laptop.
- Remove the Keyboard hinge cover using a plastic scribe (no screws to remove here, its all held with tabs and notches).
- Once the hinge is off, unscrew the two screws which secure the keyboard, and lift the keyboard gently since the keyboard connector is still connected to the motheboard.
- Rotate the keyboard connector latch (blue colored in my case) towards the front of the computer to disconnect the keyboard cable from the keyboard connector on the mother board.
- Once the above is done, the keyboard is free. Now, you should be able to see the existing WiFi card in the mini-express slot.
- In my case, there was one screw which was securing the card to the system board. I just unscrewed it and the card popped up at a 40 degree angle. I could easily remove the card out of the slot. I had to then remove the two antenna cables that connect to the card. Its simple - just gently pull it apart.
- Now, one interesting thing is, the old 3495ABG card had two anntenna connectors, but the new 4965AGN card has 3 antenna connectors. You need to use all three to make full use of the Wireless N capabilities. It would still work with two anntennas connected, but the performance won’t be “the” best.
- Luckily for me, the Dell Inspiron 1420 had a third unused antenna cable (grey color).
- So, I connected the three antenna cables/wires to the new card (white, black and grey), and then plugged back the new card in.
- Fixed all components back.
- Started the system, installed the drivers for the new card.
- As simple as that. The entire thing took around 15 mins.
So, now I have a wireless-N (draft-N) network running in my house. Performance is much better when it comes to file transfers or watching movies streamed wirelessly from the attached harddisk.
In theory, you should be able to do this on most of the laptops with intel chipsets and core duo processors (except HP laptops). Do confirm it with the laptop manufacturer and make sure your BIOS is updated!
2 comments | April 12th, 2008 at 11:17pm