Converting a Sony Viao PCG-V505BL Laptop to Built-in Wireless (In Texarkana)

I bought this Sony Vaio PCG-V505B from a student at $30. I picked it up because of its CPU being 1.8GHz. However, it did not have hard drive, hard drive connector and power adapter. Some screws were missing including the one holding the keyboard.

I bought all missing parts, including a genuine Sony power adapter. For making laptop to work again, I like genuine parts from eBay. I also found a used 80G hard drive for it. Opening up the laptop was quite straight forward. Inside the laptop, it has a mini-PCI slot. Unlike now-a-day that every laptop comes with wireless capability, the laptops few years ago have wireless as an option so that the selling price could be more for models with wireless. However, the manufacture didn't want to build different motherboards. So, even laptops without wireless have wireless ready. I bought a wireless card and the antenna. Hooking up the antenna wires from the LCD screen through the hinge to the internal wireless card was a bit difficult but it was still manageable.

When I had Windows XP and the wireless card driver installed, the laptop did not show the wireless network selection icon. After looking carefully on the motherboard at the position that similar model with wireless has the wireless switch located, I found a tiny little switch hidden beneath a component. I inserted a piece of foam in the gap between the switch and the laptop body to hold the switch in. Bingo! the wireless network selection came up and I could see my home network.

I found a user for it in the U.S. It has home in Texarkana, TX.