Compatible WLAN cards for SB3, Boom, Reciever & Transporter

[bpa]

Recently my SB3 failed to boot - no display but optical connection glowed. A common reason is the WLAN card has either become loose has failed.

So I removed the wireless card and then found SB3 would boot up. Reseating the WLAN card still resulted in no boot so thew WLAN card had clearly failed so I had to look for a replacment.

Searching threads it seems the supplied WLAN card is either model no WLANTPBG or WLANTPBG v2. Both cards are very similar in appearance. One of them is a TP-Link TL-WN560G OEM which has an Atheros ar2413 chip. In a forum post Slimdevices said the wireless card were changed somewhere between SB2 and SB3 and the chips from AR2413 to AR5212.

I couldn't find anyone selling individual TP-Link Tl-WN560G and another forum post said that "updated " version the WN360G did not work so I had to find an alternative.

It is clear the supplied WLAN is an OEM card in which case it would have been sold to other equipment suppliers so I looked for Atheros ar2413 cards whose physical layout/appearance looked very similar to the WN560G card ( http://www.tp-link.eu/pic_zoom.php?hash=05483&id=1 ) and similar spec (i.e. only 54Mbs 802.11b/g and no SuperG, no a/b/g, no 108Mbps). Similar OEMed cards also seem to be made by Askey Computer Corp. The following site has a large selection of WLAN cards and photos. http://www.pchub.com/uph/category/27...?ps=100&type=0 .

I found a Packard Bell card 17-000660 looked similar (although missing a chip on Top LHS) and found one for sale on ebay for 6 euro and it worked when installed in my Sb3 although the wireless reception is a little poorer.

Googling "wireless 17-000660" I found this card is used by Packard Bell and Toshiba. I think the sister card 17-000661 might not be suitable as it uses ar2514 and is a 108Mbps card.

Other cards that I think which might work in a SB player include

Packard Bell 17-000660
Toshiba 17-000660
ACER AR5BMB5
Sparklan WMIA-165G
Compex WLM54G 6AA1300 (although this has higher power output which might be a problem for player power supply)

It is also possible that this OEMed card has been used in some Sony and Fujitsu/Siemens laptops.

As a WLAN card is used in SB3, SB3, SB Classic, Transporter, Boom and SB Receiver - I think it would be helpful if other users could post their success/failure with replacement WLAN cards.

[TomS]

I bought a used sb2, wired only, and opened it up to find a slot just waiting for a wireless card. So I bought one and some antennas and it worked, and continues to work, just fine.

All I can retrieve easily is this description of the card, from my ebay purchase history:

"TL-WN560G MiniPCI Mini PCI WiFi 802.11b/g adapter"

I don't know that this helps SB3 owners, but perhaps this card, if found, would work there as well.

Tom S.