Adding WWAN to Elitebook 1040 G6

[horseasaurus]

Bought this secondhand laptop off a pretty legit high street seller in Preston, UK. Seems to have a long established shop selling what I figure to be reconditioned corporate laptops just past their prime. So, good legit machine I think but, not a great deal in the way of direct tech support.

It's all working fine but being a tinkerer I have an itch. It has a WWAN slot on the side, the seller initially thought it had WWAN features but when I pressed him on it he discovered it wouldn't open. In the end we concluded it must be a dummy slot. Still went ahead with the purchase though.

Looking into it a bit deeper it looks like, to get the WWAN working I'd need to open it up and fit an L850-GL 7360 or L860-GL 7560 Fibocom XMM WWAN card?

But I'm also wondering.. the slot where the SIM card would go is firmly blanked off with a silvered plastic slug of some sort.. is there actually a working SIM socket behind there? and.. are there actually any LTE antennas in my machine?

I'm guessing there were 3 kinds of machine built.. ones with no WWAN stuff at all in them, ones that had the antennas and the working SIM socket but no card (as 'later upgradeable' units), and full fat fully working examples.

If I have a machine here that's got the antennas and clicky-in clicky-out SIM socket, is it worth getting a WWAN card and sticking it in? (I use Linux and maybe theres no suitable driver but, I could dual boot Windows) or.. if theres no supporting gear in the machine to start with, is it going to be too much of a hassle?

Any way I can tell off say the serial number?

Thanks

[banhien · Accepted solution]

@horseasaurus 

Manual

           http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06413235.pdf

You need the following hardware:

• WWAN card,
• SIM kit,
• and Antennas,

Those would cost you an arm and a leg to make them work. Manual shows you few steps.

Regards

[horseasaurus]

I found one of the WWAN cards on Ebay for £90, not sure about the antennas and the SIM kit yet.

Thanks for the detailed info - very grateful for your reply 🙂

I did manage something similar on a much older Elitebook I have, but IIRC that one already had the antennas and the SIM socket in it. Hardest part was finding a Linux driver for it.. don't think I ever really got that part working fully. It was ok on Windows though IIRC