Ade Malsasa Akbar contact
Senior author, Open Source enthusiast.
Monday, May 31, 2021 at 15:06

Yesterday I upgraded both of my laptop of their respective memory and wifi card. For Lenovo Thinkpad, I upgraded the memory from 4 to 6GB. For Acer Aspire One, I upgraded the wifi device from the nonfree to the free one that I had proven works with Trisquel. Here's how I did it with pictures and some story. Now I can run Ubuntu and other operating systems smoother than ever. 

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Upgrading Wifi Card

Previously, wifi card in my Acer is Broadcom BCM4313 (a nonfree software-based wifi device). First, I removed it by taking off the black and white cables first, and smoothly pulling the card off the base. Then I placed the replacement, Atheros AR9285 (also known as AR5B95), by putting it first in the base and placing back the black and white cables to their respective sockets. Photo below shows the wifi card facing us backside and two cards of 2GB RAM at the front.

Upgrading Memory

I have a 4GB card and three 2GB cards of memory for laptop.

One thing I just learned today is that my laptop T430 has two slots of RAM, not only one, unlike what I originally thought. The second slot is located not at underside but at upperside of the laptop that is right below the keyboard. It's strange but it's true. One more thing I just realized also is that my total of 4GB RAM is consisted of two cards of 2GB RAM, not a single card of 4GB in one slot and leaving another slot empty. So in this case, I can only upgrade my Thinkpad's memory to 6GB, not 8GB, apparently. It is still very good and worth upgrading anyway.

To upgrade memory, I switched the 2GB piece with the 4GB one. I decided not to open the slot right under keyboard but the one underside instead. To do so, with a screwdriver I opened the cover on the underside part of the laptop, then carefully pressed the RAM card down and took it off immediately, and finally insert the new RAM card in place, and with the screwdriver I slowly assemble the cover once again.



Results

My Acer now can run Trisquel with wifi and my ThinkPad now can do virtualization and heavy multitasking much more easier than ever!



This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.