I’ll write this article in english, for people trying to do the same and googling it…

I bought a Lenovo S10-2 for little money (209 € with rebate on amazon.de), and upon examining it I found that there’s a lot missing for my needs. I already knew that there is no 3G integrated, but I didn’t think that Lenovo even left out the second PCIe slot! Also, there was no bluetooth. Of course memory was only 1Gb, but that was the easiest part, I just bought a 2Gb module and changed it.

Preparation

Adding 3G was the most complex part. I found a thread, where someone added just the modem, but there already was the PCIe slot and the SIM holder. Also he opted to use the existing WLAN antennas for 3G and added a universal antenna under the cover of the memory.

Ordering the PCI slot and SIM holder wasn’t easy, these are industrial parts that you can’t get in low numbers as private person.
I found this shop, where they sell single parts from Farnell to private persons. Parts ordered were the PCIe slot (JAE – MM60-52B1-E1-R650) and the SIM card holder (Farnell No. 1503772). I had to pay a premium for ordering below minimum price, so I paid for those parts ~15 €.

Since I never soldered any SMD stuff, I also needed a soldering iron that fit the job better than my 30W station, fortunately there is one available for my old Ersa soldering station. I also ordered 0,3mm solder, a soldering flux pen and 1,5mm desoldering wick, as recommended in the Samsung thread. My biggest fear with SMD soldering was to create a short between pins, since those are so near together, but after reading a bit on the theme, I found out it’s no problem at all (and somewhat expected), you just pull of that excess solder with the wick (put a bit flux on it first).

I also found this thread, where someone soldered a PCIe slot into his Samsung netbook. Obviously Samsung does the same crap as Lenovo to save 3 cent.

So, here’s the process of soldering in the PCIe slot and the SIM card holder. Of course, if you should decide to do a mod like this yourself, you know that you lose all warranty and can brick your device.

Update: So, images are added… excuse the crappy quality, and do not buy that current touchscreen camera from aldi germany south (I had to cover the flash with my finger to get *halfway* decent pics).

Preparing the workspace

The empty space for the PCIe slot

The empty spce for the sim card holder

The sim card holder

PCIe slot soldered in

sim card holder soldered in

Material for the next step: GSM card, bluetooth module and antenna

Bluetooth module

3G card - note it's not the 3507g that is whitelisted

bluetooth cable doesn't fit

Screen without the frame

screen removed from frame

place for the right 3G antenna

place for the left 3G antenna

left 3G antenna in position

right 3G antenna in position

routing of the cables

routing of the cables

everything in position

Soldering

You will need an eyeloop to check those connectors after soldering. I used a 30x that I have lying around from soldering tattoo needles. I really was lucky somewhat, I created only one short that I could fix with the desoldering wick. However, upon inspection I found out that I lost one of the pads on the board, probably due to too much heat. Looking up the PCIe specifications, I found that pin46 that I lost is for some LED. So my hope was that it wasn’t an important pin

The SIM card holder I ordered has 8 pins, while on the board are only 6 pads. From the other threads I took that only the leftmost pins of the holder are used, and the two rightmost are only for card detection, so i soldered the holder with the 6 leftmost pins to the board. That resulted in the holder not sitting in a perfect position on the board, the sim card goes a bit hard in and out, but it works and I won’t change that card too often. Since I saw no option to fix the holder to the board by soldering, I glued it on

At that time I didn’t have the 3G modem, so I put everything together again, and checked if the netbook still worked, which it did… phew

check, 1 2, 1 2

I tried to move the WLAN card from the left slot to the right one… It wouldn be recognized by the OS anymore. I thought I soldered something wrong, but after some research, I found out that the right slot is no real PCIe slot. It seems that in the PCIe specification there’s also a USB integrated, and that is the only part that is usable by that slot. The WLAN card I have however is a full PCI card, so it couldn’t work anyway in the left slot. Maybe that is the reason for Lenovo to leave out that slot, to prevent people calling why their PCI card doesn’t work in that slot So the only way to see if everything works was to order a 3G card and try.

hack that BIOS

Lenovo does a bad thing with their BIOS, they have a whitelist in it that only allows specific hardware. Only heaven knows why, but I wasn’t in a mood to pay ~100€ for the correct card (Ericsson 3507g, FRU PN: 43Y6537), when there are cards available for US $40.

After some more research, I found that there is a way to hack the BIOS, you need a tool called ezH2O, and as I found out, you need version 2.0.1.13. Other versions don’t open the BIOS image. The whole process is outlined here, and you can find the file also there. This worked so far, my netbook booted fine with the patched bios. I couldn’t verify if it worked regarding the patch, since I had no 3G modem yet and no other PCIe card, but now I know that it does

So I bought a 3G modem on ebay, a Ericsson 3507g as well, but with a different FRU PN (sold as Dell modem), which reportedly doesn’t work in the Lenovo S10-2 usually. I bought a separate external 3G antenna, that I fixed behind the screen. I had to remove some tin foil, since I guess reception wouldn’t be too good with it installed. However the isolation seems to be important for the screen itself, since it flickers when the 3G searches reception. Probably I’ll have to open the case again and add some tin foil behind the screen to isolate it from the antennas. I also bought a internal bluetooth chip, since the board is prepared for those anyway, should be easy. However the bluetooth chip came with a wrong cable that wouldn’t fit on the board. I’m now in contact with the seller to get the correct cable.

The 3G card is here meanwhile, and I’m trying to get it running now, fighting a bit with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.4.

Windows woes

Since I had quite some problems to get the modem dialing under Ubuntu, I thought I’d just install Win7 to see if it works there. Boy, what a hassle… Dell stuff only installs on Dell hardware, so I couldn’t get the drivers installed. The SE drivers wouldn’t install too, probably because the card reported itself to windows as Dell 5530 Wireless HSDPA card. After a lot of googling, I found the article of this guy, and I can tell you he’s a real crack… he modded the Dell driver package to remove authentication, and so the drivers would install (he also has a section there for removing the whitelist from the S10, which has another BIOS then the S10-2).

After all that, the card is working under Windows 7. I installed the Sony Ericsson wireless Manager that is linked in the previous article, and I can connect fine.

Since I do want to run Ubuntu Netbook, (I just feel it’s more lightweight and better suited for that computer), I’ll have to figure how to get it working there.

Update: After the Windows driver odyssey I installed Moblin once again, out of curiosity. 3G was instantly recognized and connecting. As much as I love the speed and modern look of Moblin however, it is too limited for me. The social tab is restricted to twitter and flickr, and I don’t use those… you can’t really modify much there, so back to UNR it was for me.

Good thing: After installing Ubuntu Netbook remix, this time the card was instantly working. Very nice

My head hurts…

No I just gotta get rid somehow of that screen flickering, when the 3G card is active (you know that sound that a mobile makes when it’s near audio? It’s the same here, but optical… ). Maybe I shouldn’t have removed that isolation from the back of the screen, but I guess that would have killed reception. Maybe I need to add that isolation back in, but between the screen and antennas… I will find out

Update:

So, I did add the isolation, and it did help. The screen flickering was gone. However, the reception I had didn’t make me very happy. In the same position where I have full 5 bars reception with my mobile phone, I have only two with the netbook. I thought maybe the problem is the 3G antenna that maybe was made for other parts of the world. I ordered a different antenna and today had the time to try it. I was very happy to see three bars with the new antenna connected to the “Main” connector of the modem, and when I connected the one that was previously connected there to the “Aux” connector I even got 4 of 5 bars… woohoo…

I added insultaion with foil again and closed everything. Here are some pics how it looks now inside:

Antennas added

Fixing and isolation

RF insulation

Now the bad news: After putting everything together again, reception was down to two bars again. No idea what to do now, I’d really like to know, how that looks inside a notebook where 3G is factory fitted, so if anyone has pics, send them…