X61 WLAN Upgrade

[TPFanatic]

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.

[RealBlackStuff]

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

[TPFanatic]

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.