WWAN modem card for an industrial tablet device thing

Meowster · May 7, 2022

I hope this fits under the right category, technically its still networking? Anyways, I have this rugged tablet thing that runs Windows Embedded 7 standard made by a company which apparently no longer exists. It works fine and I have upgraded it a few times now. However, I would like WWAN to work, since it says it supports it. I got a brochure for it online, and it says that the device will support a WWAN card with a Qualcomm Gobi 3000 chipset. I have fond various models online, and the connector is the same but they are all branded eg. HP, Sony, Dell etc. Will a branded card work with my tablet? Or do I need to find a non branded one, such as a Sierra one perhaps?

Falcon1986 · May 15, 2022

On 5/7/2022 at 6:45 AM, Meowster said:

Will a branded card work with my tablet? Or do I need to find a non branded one, such as a Sierra one perhaps?

Have you tried searching online support forums to see what others have used? Since the manufacturer is no longer available, you'll have to rely on what others with similar devices have done. There's not much we can do to help if you don't share the exact make/model.

If the cards you've found are inexpensive, it might be worth it to just try one. Keep in mind that some OEMs will lock hardware support through the BIOS to specific brands.

Meowster · June 21, 2022

On 5/15/2022 at 6:30 PM, Falcon1986 said:

Have you tried searching online support forums to see what others have used? Since the manufacturer is no longer available, you'll have to rely on what others with similar devices have done. There's not much we can do to help if you don't share the exact make/model.

If the cards you've found are inexpensive, it might be worth it to just try one. Keep in mind that some OEMs will lock hardware support through the BIOS to specific brands.

This response is kinda late but thank you. In the end I purchased a Sony branded card which was supposed to go in some Vaio notebook but it ended up working just fine, had some troubles as the drivers from the manufacturer (which were actually on some german FTP) were all in Chinese but eventually got there.