Friday, June 28, 2019

How to Make Mini PCI-E Wireless and Bluetooth Card Working in Desktop

I have a couple of mini PCI-E wireless and bluetooth cards from old laptops such as Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230

and Intel Centrino Advanced-N 2230.

So why not put them into my desktop to add wireless network and bluetooth features? Such an easy-peasy job! Went to EBay and bought a mini PCI-E to PCIE adapter like this

Put on the mini PCI-E card and inserted it to my desktop, everything was working fine... until... I noticed there was no bluetooth on my desktop! Took it for granted I blamed hardware driver, searched Intel's website and downloaded the latest driver, installed it, no bluetooth! Searched Dell's website and downloaded the driver (since the old cards are from Dell laptops), installed it, still NO bluetooth!!

This easy job became interesting! I searched online about why bluetooth not working and people suggested to tape pin 51 on the mini PCI-E card to unlock the bluetooth feature, I tried, still failed. Then I noticed EBay recommended me another adapter according to my purchase record

This one came with a USB port and cable but unfortunately it did not support my card

To make it worse there is no additional internal USB port in my desktop! What can I do now? Luckily Google gave me a circuit schema of Mini PCI-E to PCIE adapter

According to the schema Mini PCI-E card can connect to USB and no surprise my adapter is using the same reference design and I can find the reserved PINs at the bottom right of it with clear labels!

OK, let's connect a USB cable to these PINs and see what will happen.

Step 1: Sacrifice a USB mouse to get a USB cable


Step 2: Find out the D- and D+ leads by multimeter

Step 3: Tie a knot to anchor the USB cable, solder on D- and D+ leads and insulate GND and +5V leads


Step 4: Tape it up
And the final product looks like this

Insert the card and plug in the USB cable to test it
Yippee! Finally my bluetooth worked!

If your computer still cannot see the bluetooth device, double check your are connecting the correct USB leads to the board; If you received the error message about unrecognised USB device, you need to swap the D+ and D- leads on your card.

Happy hacking :D!


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