Monday, October 06, 2008

How-to: 3G HSDPA to Gigabyte M912


Yes, my plan is to 3G enable all mobile computers..

Continue reading..



M912 has Express Card slot so you could use external card.. but it sticks out quite a bit.


The good news is that there is a slot for internal 3G modem.. but Gigabyte has disabled it.


After a bit of testing and research, we found out that taping the pin 20 on the modem enables the radio.


Novatel 3G card with SIM slot inside M219.. and working!

But there was still a problem. Now you could use the 3G but it was always on, which is a problem on flights and for battery life.


So we needed a on/off switch. If you solder wires and on/off switch to these pins, you can control the modem...

..but then a better idea hit us:

as you can control the wifi module from software and keyboard, why not tape the wifi modules pin 20, use it on the 3G slot and put the 3G card to wifi cards slot...

then use keyboard shortcut to enable/disable the 3G and wifi software to control the wifi... tested and working fine!


( if you dont want to tape the pin 20 and don't mind loosing varranty, you can cut the line between the solder points, like on the pcb picture )


Igor, the owner of this M912, is using the second wifi antenna on the 3G card and everything is working gooood...

Thanks again Igor, it was fun to remotely mod your computer ;) !



You can get the modem and the M912 from MobilX:

Novatel Wireless EU850D 3G mini card at Mobilx

Gigabyte M912M at MobilX


Details, News and Links for Gigabyte M912






Related News:

48 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where do you put the SIM card if the slot's not build into the WWAN card?

Anonymous said...

Great Mod very nice to see what happens.
Thanks for that information ;-)

Anonymous said...

jkk i am still waiting for the 3G on kohjinsha sx3 and I will keep nagging on you till you do it :p

Anonymous said...

Awesome! Great work!
This makes the decision very hard!

Anonymous said...

JKK,

how's the 3G signal? how bout the 3G antenna?

Anonymous said...

First anonymous, I'm guessing there's no place you can put the SIM card at all.

JKK, that's ingenious!

Kim said...

can you recommend a 7.2mbit card that will work for this as well?

Anonymous said...

Yes !!!

Anonymous said...

Will this 3G card also work with an Eee PC 901 after soldering the Mini PCI-E connector to the motherboard? This will save the hassle of soldering a sim card slot to the motherboard and cutting in the plastic.

JKK said...

There is no SIM slot on the M912 so that's why you need to use that 3G card.

It is 7.2mbit card...

and yes, it would work on 901 too.. or on any other computer with pcie slot.

Charles Edward Pax said...

Is there a place on the circuit board where it looks like a LED and switch should go. Maybe next to the other indicator lights and power switches.

I wonder if there is a hidden shortcut key to power on/off that pcie slot. I'm not sure how the hardware is set up. Does this sound plausible?

Anonymous said...

Oh - so does that mean that you are taking the Everun Note and doing a 3G mod for that too?

Before you do a full video report on the Everun Note, what other testing do you have to do on it?

JKK said...

Everun has 3G on it now ;) will do a video when my flu and fever gets better.... other testing coming too..

Joao Oliveira said...

great as usual jkk.

i have a m912x with vista utimate on it i say it runs quite will the only this is that some flash videos are slow when in battery mode. thing that doesnt hapend in xp so i considering going back to xp.
now the real question. what is the best way to tape them pin 20? what tape/method to use?

thanks,

Anonymous said...

Use good electric tape and cut out a small piece, wich you tape on pin 20 on 3g or wifi card, (only the under side, look at pic)

as simple as that, and your ready to go surfing via 3g.

Anonymous said...

do we only need to open the back hatch for this?
or must we open the pc totally ,remove keyboard etc?
peter

JKK said...

omly the back hach.. it is easy ;)

Anonymous said...

jkk i have ordered the 3g card from novatel, but to be absolutely sure i understood this corretly: if i swapp the 3g and wifi card around,then i only need to tape the wifi card on pin 20?(NO TAPE on the 3g card as it will now go into the slot originally used for wifi?)

Anonymous said...

yes, correct.

be sure to use the ACU (Atheros client utility) to turn on/off the wifi card.

btw: download ACU separately, i think its not included in the driver provided by gigabyte, just google it.

3G card will be turned on/off via Fn+F2 key.
(originally used for wifi)

factoring knowledge base said...

JKK:
If the $300 difference was not a concern, which would you chose if you were a buyer: 900HA or M912M, and why?
Thanks

Anonymous said...

So by taping the pin would this work in a 901 as well in the WiFi card slot?

Anonymous said...

...Or as this werent available when you last done an eee mod would this just work if you removed the wifi card form a 901 and put this in its place?

Anonymous said...

I also 3G'ed my M912 with this description. Works great! Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Hi! First thx for all wonderful information jkk.

But I need some additional answer, this Atheros client utility. Do anybody know if you could do this in linux ?

And second, I have seeked for pictures to see the size off the 6 cell batteri. Do any body of you seen a picture off it ?

Matt said...

Awesome guide!
I chose to try and install an AverMedia a306 DVB card in my m912, but my machine won't boot at all with it installed.
Did you have any boot issues when using the second pcie for 3G?

M.

Anonymous said...

Wonderful, I just test to tape the pin 20 of my wifi module on this second mini pcie slot before buying the 3G card.

that's works !

next step is to change my icon 255 by a mini pci express module linux compatible :-)

Anonymous said...

last Anonymous : I did my test under Linux.

You have to install madwifi, the led never light on my M912 but the wifi works.

for information the MC8775 seams to be reconized under Linux with a little hack :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=780345

Anonymous said...

could you please answer me. Will putting tale on the underside of pin 20 work for a compaq a900 ? the eu850d has the same connector but when i tape the 20 the laptop wont power up ! please help me

JKK said...

sorry, but i have no idea about the compaq a 900...

.. on HP 1000 it didn't work either so i had to fool the bios with hack:

http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-3g-hsdpa-to-hp-mini-1000.html

Anonymous said...

the dell mini does not have this problem does it. On your suggestion i bought an 850d from mobilx and i am waiting for dell to get off the pot a ship my mini 9 but until then i wanted to test the 850d in my compaq a900 !! thank you !!

JKK said...

yep, 850D works on Dell Mini 9's wifi slot:

http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-internal-3g-to-dell-mini-9-easy.html

Anonymous said...

What I meant to say is that I hope they have not started to lock to bios on the mini 9 (I bought the mini 9 and the eu850d all because of you when I saw that video last Monday !)

I received the eu850d today from Hungary but Dell is painfully slow at getting my mini 9 to me !!

I just wanted to test the eu850d for possible DOA but I can because of the bios lock on my compaq a900

Thank you very much again !

Anonymous said...

Well you are a genius :) it works. My only problem is that although I have full bars of HSDPA on all my devices, the eu850d seems to run at UMTS 95% of the time and HSDPA 5% of the time. Is this because the antenna is a wifi one ? Would I get HSDPA with a different antenna ? If so, were would I buy one (Canada or USA) ?

Many thanks

Anonymous said...

Anyone ? I have my mini 9 sitting next to my iphone and my iphone has full bars hsdpa and my mini 9 (novatel 850d) has 1 bar umts !! must be the antenna ??

Where can I get the right wiring for this card ???

Anonymous said...

i did a test by removing the wifi antenna from the 3g card and it proves that the antenna is doing nothing for the 3g card. my signal remained the same after disconnecting it.

Anonymous said...

Hello JKK nice mod.. I want to do it also.. What 3G modem can i use with my Acer Extensa 5420 and will work in any sim card especially here in the philippines?

Hope you can help me....

Anonymous said...

geez, nevermind....

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know how long the battery will last on the asus 900ha in powersaving mode and at 50% brightness doing wifi browsing?

Anonymous said...

If you want to embed a 3G-antenna into the display like the WIFI-ones see
http://www.mobile01.com/newsdetail.php?id=6108
for pictures (and chinese description) of a complete disassembly.

Anonymous said...

Is this 3g card compatible in the us with verizon or at&t ?

Unknown said...

Can I use a SierraWireless MC8780 i.s.o. de EU850D ?

JKK said...

nope.. only EU850D will work as it has the SIM slot

klaasi said...

Anyone got any luck with adding DVB-T to this Mini PCIe?
That'll be killer feature for me - having ExpressCard for 3G...

Anonymous said...

where do i get the atheros driver for Wireless lan? I had to uninstall atheros client utility it because it conflicts with windows while connected on wireless network.

morganmobile said...

just found out that the same trick of covering pin 20 works for Aspire One Pro P531h. Easy!

noobieta said...

jkk is there a video about putting the card in the gigabyte m912 cant seem to understand the guide above

Anonymous said...

Hello Mirek,

it is possible use in Win7?

thank you for answer. Mirek

Anonymous said...

I tried this with my acer laptop but when i check with Everest tool, it reports that the modem is on USB 1.1 connection...can u please check..

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