djangoproject.com | python.org | nginx.org
version seven.
  http://demongin.org
demongin.org - Turning on the Wireless NIC on a Lenovo Thinkpad X61

Turning on the Wireless NIC on a Lenovo Thinkpad X61

A brief "public service announcement" type post where I explain how to find the "on/off" button for Lenovo X61 wifi cards.


Saturday, 2010-03-27 | Announcements

Indian Bob, kill that German!
Woodbury Kane

I had been running the latest Ubuntu on my Lenovo X61 and generally been very happy with the performance: specifically, I had been very happy indeed to find that the wireless stuff all worked, right "out of the box", as Linux/Debian wireless support for Lenovo/Atheros hardware has been touch-and-go for as long as I can remember.

But then, one day, the wireless NIC stopped working. It only took a second to run iwconfig and realize that the device wasn't powered, but I couldn't figure out how to power the damn thing on. And then, about a week after I mysteriously "lost" power, it hit me: there's got to be a button or a switch some place.

And so there was:

It's not well-labeled and it's also not entirely clear that this switch is the one that controls the wifi power. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd guess that it's probably not the switch that normally controls the wireless NIC, but some weird ACPI cock-up causes it to function in that capacity on Ubuntu Karmic.

Here's a close-up showing the button in the "on" position: