FZ-55 MK1 retrofit WWAN card

[theoak2]

My FZ-55 did not come with a WWAN card, and I decided to see about retrofitting one. The official card that ships with the FZ-55 is an EM7511, which supports 4G and NetFirst.

The laptop seems to have the appropriate antenna that supports both WLAN and WWAN. When I open the hatch on the bottom, there are 2 antenna leads connected to a tiny board that seems not to be connected to anything except those leads. (Just a placeholder?) There is no dual passthru hardware on my laptop, and the antenna board that I see in pictures, does not look at all like the board in my laptop. (See https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/ACJ9TGWW18A/5280861) Also, the software for the EM7355 is NOT shown as a download for this laptop and does NOT appear to support Windows 11. It IS available for other Panasonic laptops (CF-19 / CF-31 / CF-53 / CF-54 / CF-C2 / FZ-G1 / FZ-M1).

Most likely, all I needed to do was to get a Panasonic EM7511 card, but they are pretty pricey just for an experiment that may possibly fail because of the dual passthru being missing, and having the wrong antenna board.

So I ordered a GOBI 5000 EM7355 Sierra Wireless Air Prime M.2 4G WWAN card off eBay for about $30, just to see if it would work. To my surprise, it works!! I did have to go into the BIOS and set the optional toughkit number to 25. Also I downloaded the software package for this card that works with the above-mentioned laptops. The software does not show it compatible with Windows 11, only up to Windows 10. That package does work with my FZ-55 running Windows 11 anyway. So happy camper here!!

Thought I would share in case anyone else with an FZ-55 wanted to retrofit WWAN.

EDIT: I was incorrect to say that EM7511 supports 5G, so I edited the above post to correct that error.

[theoak2]

Found an EM7511 card for reasonable price, and put that in place of the EM7355. Just uninstalled software for EM7355 and installed software for EM7511, and works perfectly!!

Software/drivers available here:
https://na.panasonic.com/us/support/cel ... an-drivers

[Adolfo]

I am wondering if there is any WWAN ID chart available to look up? I know "2e" is the default one for EM7511, maybe that one will work with EM7355 in Win11.

[theoak2]

I don't know of a chart, but 25 worked for AT&T 4G with the EM7355 card in Win11. I don't think the toughkit number changes with OS. Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux both see it with that number. Also, when I got the EM7511 card, that toughkit number still worked for AT&T. Not sure if Verizon and Other carriers require a different number.

[Toughbook]

I know that I am late to the game here but I just scored a great deal on 5 FZ-55 MK1s. They are model FZ-55C006VM. I cannot find the old configurator but another site shows that model as;

DISCONTINUED PUBLIC SECTOR SPECIFIC -Win10 Pro, Intel Core i5-8365U 1.6GHZ, vPro 14.0" FHD 1000 NIT GLOVED MULTI TOUCH, 512GB SSD, 8GB, INTEL WI-FI, BLUETOOTH, TPM 2.0, INFRARED WEBCAM, EMISSIVE BACKLIT KEYBOARD, FLAT, CF-SVCPDEP3Y - TOUGHBOOK & TOUGHPAD PREMIER DEPLOYMENT - INCLUDES IMAGING, CUSTOMER PORTAL ACCESS, MULTILOCATION SHIPPING AND DISK IMAGE MANAGEMENT AT THE PANASONIC NATIONAL SERVICE CENTER (YEARS 1,2,3), CF-SVCLTNF3YR - PROTECTION PLUS WARRANTY LAPTOP (YEARS 1, 2 &3), CF-SVC512SSD3Y - 512GB SSD - TOUGHBOOK NO RETURN OF DEFECTIVE DRIVE (YEARS 1,2 & 3), CF-SVCADDPRM12B - ABSOLUTE RESILIENCE - 12 MONTH TERM - PANASONIC PS BUNDLE SLED CUSTOMER ONLY.

So... I bought X-Packs for all of them to put serial ports in the back... I added 1TB drives with 16GB RAM and I am adding WWAN cards so I can advertise them as WWAN capable. BUT... Since these guys didn't come with GPS... I want to use the GPS on the WWAN... Which I have never done.

Anyone know how to get all that working?