FZ-55 MK1 retrofit WWAN card
Posted: Thu May 09, 2024 8:23 am
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.
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.