Adding a USB Port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (The Hard Way)
The author modifies a ThinkPad X1 Nano laptop by adding an internal USB port. They overcome challenges, design a flex PCB, boost voltage, and successfully integrate the port for device connectivity.
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The article discusses the author's attempt to add an internal USB port to their ThinkPad X1 Nano laptop. They explore different methods, including using an M.2 slot for a USB card, investigating firmware whitelists, and repurposing the fingerprint reader's USB connection. The author designs a flex PCB to integrate a USB port, boosts voltage for compatibility with devices like the Logitech Bolt receiver, and uses EasyEDA for PCB design. After assembling the PCB, they successfully integrate the USB port into the laptop, enabling connectivity for various devices. The article details the challenges faced, solutions implemented, and the final successful outcome of the project.
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17 commentshttps://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/lx7d8f/pfsense_len...
Apparently it's possible to add the pcie device identifier to the whitelist, but it looks like a very fiddly process and I didn't really care about the minor issues resulting from the cruder approach:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/dcf0lw/comment/fbpy...
No idea if any of that works on the X1 Nano, but you never know.
> Unfortunately, Lenovo continues to implement a stupid network card whitelist that IBM started over 20 years ago on its ThinkPad models. If the card in the M.2 slot is not advertising a known PCI vendor and product ID in the whitelist contained in the BIOS (now UEFI firmware), the ThinkPad will refuse to boot.
Why?? Are there legitimate reasons for this sort of design behavior other than anticompetitiveness?
I reflashed the BIOS to kill the whitelist, but I'm left with a bigger problem. The WiFi slot offers PCI, but not USB. The WWAN slot has USB, but not PCI.
I ended up tapping into the original Bluetooth connector to steal the USB lines and route them back to the PCI connector.
I had some issues at first with the device not enumerating reliably, but it eventually settled down.
Now I have WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5. Unfortunately the WiFi frontend is extremely bad (it's a Chinese knockoff) and I have pretty bad signal strength even literally on top of the router. But it works well enough and my Bluetooth headphones now work more than 10ft away from the machine.
The major problem is that the only WiFi 6 card available in mini PCIe is knockoff Intel AX210 cards. I suppose that's fair, mPCIe is basically obsolete these days. Unfortunately I don't have space for a M.2 or other adapter. Maybe I could build a custom express card
In my experience this has not been true at all now that most Logitech mice use LE ("Bluetooth Smart") rather than BT. The only advantage the RF dongle has is that it works without an OS.... or on an OS without a BT/LE stack, like here.
Is this still true of modern Bluetooth 5.0 LE devices? Not sure about latency, but battery life seems to be extremely good now days. I get at least half a year out of a charge, on a mouse I use nearly every day.
It's a really clean job though.
A suitably heavy weight will solve that problem.
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