Amazon [as] tech support
It's not always the driver or the OS
I recently bought a mini-pci wifi card for my trust Dell D830 laptop, an Intel 7260 dual band ac with built-in bluetooth. Mind you, I only have single band N but that one day may change. I also was tired of the disconnects from the Intel 4965 card it used to have. Bluetooth was not really a concern, as I already have that.
Swapping it out was of course a breeze, with a minor problem of the antenna cables being almost too short, as the older card was a full size mini-pci, and the new one is a half-height one with an adapter. No biggie there as there is just enough slack once I massaged the wiring a little. However, I could not get it to recognize the bluetooth at all. I spent a few hours going over bug reports, forum posts and the like going back many years (which is the norm in searching Linuxy things) but no solution.
Sigh.
I thought perhaps I had been duped by an Amazon retailer and received the incorrect card, as there are a number of variants. But no, it is correct. Oh, well. I am happy with the speedier wifi, which is the main reason I got the thing. I reinstalled the separate OEM wifi chip and went on my way. Perhaps this old lappy simply can't use Bt other than the OEM internal dongle.
Well, tonight, as I wascleaning my place and/or
working hard at job #2
severely goofing off and sucking on a popsicle
I decided to give the bluetooth another look-see. Again, all I came up with were old reports about trying different firmwares, a few config options, and a general complete lack of success, I gave the actual card another once-over. Yes, it was still truly a dual-band ac with bt, but I spied this little gem:
And
Bingo! Bluetooth is on! Minus the blinky wifi and bt LEDs!!
Now I just need to find an a/c wifi spot and figure out if that works/can be enabled (iwconfig only shows abgn), or a dual band router to check that feature out.
I recently bought a mini-pci wifi card for my trust Dell D830 laptop, an Intel 7260 dual band ac with built-in bluetooth. Mind you, I only have single band N but that one day may change. I also was tired of the disconnects from the Intel 4965 card it used to have. Bluetooth was not really a concern, as I already have that.
Swapping it out was of course a breeze, with a minor problem of the antenna cables being almost too short, as the older card was a full size mini-pci, and the new one is a half-height one with an adapter. No biggie there as there is just enough slack once I massaged the wiring a little. However, I could not get it to recognize the bluetooth at all. I spent a few hours going over bug reports, forum posts and the like going back many years (which is the norm in searching Linuxy things) but no solution.
Sigh.
I thought perhaps I had been duped by an Amazon retailer and received the incorrect card, as there are a number of variants. But no, it is correct. Oh, well. I am happy with the speedier wifi, which is the main reason I got the thing. I reinstalled the separate OEM wifi chip and went on my way. Perhaps this old lappy simply can't use Bt other than the OEM internal dongle.
Well, tonight, as I was
severely goofing off and sucking on a popsicle
I decided to give the bluetooth another look-see. Again, all I came up with were old reports about trying different firmwares, a few config options, and a general complete lack of success, I gave the actual card another once-over. Yes, it was still truly a dual-band ac with bt, but I spied this little gem:
Installed two of these on two different Dell D830 laptops. The tricks (D830 specific) are:
1. Make sure the WAN/cellular port is enabled under Wireless in BIOS
2. Install card in the WAN slot not the one the old WiFi card used and use WAN/Cell antenna leads (short WiFi ones won't reach)
1. Make sure the WAN/cellular port is enabled under Wireless in BIOS
2. Install card in the WAN slot not the one the old WiFi card used and use WAN/Cell antenna leads (short WiFi ones won't reach)
Minor downside on D830 is that new card does not properly control WiFi and Bluetooth LEDs on laptop but otherwise a great upgrade.
Now I just need to find an a/c wifi spot and figure out if that works/can be enabled (iwconfig only shows abgn), or a dual band router to check that feature out.
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