Thinkpads Forum

Decided it was time to service/upgrade the X61 Tablet we occasionally use with a fresh new CMOS battery and a WLAN upgrade thanks to the Middleton's unlock. Subsequently encountered the very common problem of stripped screws.

My dremel is wobbly so attempting to make the screws flat-blade compatible failed, leading me to just cut out the old WLAN card (4965 without N) instead. RIP to the otherwise functional card.

I could grab the remaining corners of the 4965 with a pliers and with some upward pulling loosen the screws. Now with a half-height 6205 the speed and temperature is improved and I'm not missing the 4965. I know there's other ways to remove the stripped scews but I was feeling brutish and didn't want to tape the disable pin to use it in the WWAN slot instead.

If you still have one, you could also put in the (full-size, faster) 450Mbps AR9380.
Or go all out with a wifi-6 AX200HMW+bracket

I'm still a luddite for Win 7 so Wifi 6 is no use to me. But I do own an AX210 in a MPCIE converter that I hope to use for Openwrt. Fwiw the m2 wifi on an adapter is too tall to fit under X60/X61 palmrest, so only the bootleg MPCIE versions would work in X60/X61. This also rules out an NVME SSD in the broadband slot. Clearance is not an issue in X200 body which recesses all MPCIE connectors under the motherboard.