Updating my Thinkpad T430 wifi card

The wifi card that was installed in my laptop was an Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6205

The N 6205 is a dual band card but unlike the AC 7620, It doesn't have an integrated bluetooth card, nor 802.11ac

I previously flashed the bios with 1vyrain [see article], which wipes the whitelist that would otherwise prevent me from installing hardware not on the list.

So I can now install the AC 7620. The T430 doesn't activate this card unless the 51st pin is removed.

I removed the pin with my Dremel (some use tape). This pin is the last pin on the right when the card is face up.

I put the laptop back together and checked. The wifi came on automatically. To see if the Bluetooth card was found:

sudo dmesg | grep tooth
[    7.472602] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[    7.472644] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[    7.472650] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[    7.472652] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[    7.472658] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[    7.696765] Bluetooth: hci0: Legacy ROM 2.5 revision 8.0 build 1 week 45 2013
[    7.701284] Bluetooth: hci0: Intel Bluetooth firmware file: intel/ibt-hw-37.7.10-fw-1.80.1.2d.d.bseq
[    7.807629] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[    7.807633] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[    7.807637] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[    7.900772] Bluetooth: hci0: Intel BT fw patch 0x2a completed & activated
[    7.951976] Bluetooth: MGMT ver 1.22
[   13.890988] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[   13.890998] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[   13.891004] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11

Hooray!

I then installed Bluez

sudo pacman -S bluez
sudo pacman -S bluez-utils
sudo pacman -S blueman

sudo micro /etc/bluetooth/main.conf

set AutoEnable=true

then

sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service
sudo systemctl start bluetooth.service

I made sure pulseaudio was installed

sudo pacman -S pulseaudio
sudo pacman -S pulseaudio-bluetooth
sudo pacman -S pavucontrol
sudo systemctl enable pulseaudio
sudo systemctl start pulseaudio

Then I connected my bluetooth headset and ... it just worked

Sources:

https://medium.com/@n4ru/the-definitive-t430-modding-guide-3dff3f6a8e2e

https://www.jeremymorgan.com/tutorials/linux/how-to-bluetooth-arch-linux/

https://www.sevarg.net/2022/12/03/thinkpad-t430s-wireless-combo-card-upgrade/