You may be right but if that's the case then Lenovo's efforts to control the supply chain seem oddly inconsistent. The Yoga 2 Pro doesn't have the same draconian whitelist for wi-fi cards as our Yoga 2 13 model, for instance.

I have a feeling it could have something to do with a policy that was approved somewhere along the line in the development of our model. Perhaps when they submitted the design for FCC approval they did it in such a way that the FCC only approved specific part numbers, as opposed to the Yoga 2 Pro where they approved a broader category of wireless card.

That's pure speculation on my part, so who knows? But if I'm correct then I can understand how Lenovo may not have wanted to bother re-submitting the Y213 for further approval with additional part numbers, and resorted to the whitelist as the easy way out. Or maybe it was just two different design teams that each did things their own way for the Y2Pro and Y213. I don't know, it really doesn't make sense to me.  I can't understand why the Y213 should be so locked down while the Y2Pro is not, considering they're such similar machines with the same form factor etc.

Hi all,

does anybody know the status of this issue?

Wifi card number 20200617 doesn't seem to be available anywhere, even via medion germany. Does the current bios version 1.17 still contain the wifi whitelist?

Thanks a lot for your help.

Best

Horst

Hi,

I was thinking of this solution.

It's possible by a pci wlan to cover pin#20 so the wifi-card can't disabled. (look around the internet)

How about trying to disable the wifi in the bios but enable the wifi-card by cover the "swith-pin".

If this works i think de bios doesn't see the wifi-card and the system will pass the "whitelist"

and we have a working wifi card.

The only thing is this. de wifi can't be disabled anymore, but you can install a better and faster card.

I only just can't find this "pin#20" (switch pin) on a m.2 ngff socket..............................

Is this a idea ?

i am going nuts...can't find the wifi card nowhere ... in italy is impossible to find .. there is one in germany , they want 113 euro ... this is a robbery :(

Someone from europe who sells one ? ?

did lenovo free'd up some card with lasr bios update 1.16 ?

Hello everyone!

And I might as well start with saying - Thank You for all the information that has been gathered here! You have been most welcome help!

I can confirm, that at-least one of three Yogas that I have - accepted the BCM94352Z LENOVO FRU 04X6020. Image of the card (one of three cards). Other two will receive their upgrade next week when they will back and available... I purchased the cards here at quite a steep price of ~80Eur per card, but as I had no other choice - that might as well have been a bargain price. This week I received a lenovo service shop email - that the 35020612 link cards are available for pre-order or something - they where not available for order for the last month or so.

At this moment - I can confirm:
> BCM94352Z works in Lenovo Yoga 2 13", Bios version 1.09
> This card (BCM94352Z) has poorer range compared to my ThinkPad L450 Intel AC-7265 (similar to 7260). That said, it has more stable connection and better down link speed and slower up speed. For most uses - this is better. If I have the chance - I will try this card in the L450 and see if it works - compare that the situation is the same. Would love to make dual boot hackintosh with working wifi... :) As sources say - the BCM94352Z is compatible with Mac...
> The Intel 7260 AC (PN: 20200617) from the ThinkPad series - did not work in Yoga - got the unauthorized message at boot. The card I got from the authorized IBM Latvia service shop - but they already warned me that it probably will not work. My hat goes off to them for lending me a card in such a short notice... Thanks!
> The Lenovo service shop was not able to ship to Latvia (LV) - nor to Baltics (LT/EE), had to make an account to the UK address that I had available. In the end spent up to 2 hours in four weeks on phone with the support - and could not get the 35020612 card, at first they said that the Medion Germany had like 10 of these cards, but then I was put on hold for almost a month. Then I received an email saying that these cards are not available for order at this moment. And when I made the order again - after two weeks I got the message that they are finally available, but I already had god three BCM94352Z from ebay.
> Also can confirm that the Samsung SSD drive MZ-N5E250BW works great in all these three Yoga's that I have. Now if only I could get the sff cable for the regular sata drives... that would be something, but at this moment they are still quite expensive.
> With Windows 10 - the only problem that I have with all these three laptops - they don't know how to sleep well... Can not phrase it any other way. At the time of writing there is something seriously wrong with Windows - as the yogas sometimes can not wake up (blank screen), cannot enter the sleep (empty battery). Also the battery life is mediocre 4-5 hours average. The lenovo transition software works OK with windows 10 - that was a nice surprise. Hope the sleep issue goes away at some point - as the laptop is really great otherwise. Minus of-course the dreadful WiFi card. The sleep issues are also present on other manufacturers laptops - so I am accepting that as the price of new technology...

> One of the Yoga's had something wierd going on with the screen - RMA it, link to the problem - here. Notice the brown/yellowish spots near the bottom? Something wierd... Only took more than month for the RMA to complete. Yay!

So all in all - I am pretty pleased about the end result. Love the Yoga, but hate the support. Hope the Lenovo will not make this mistake again in the future. Reminds me of the time when HP made Pavilion series 6 laptops - that had to replace the motherboard once per 3 - 6 months - as it was manufacturing defect (overheat problems) or the time when Apple made defective macbooks (deffective gpu's). Yup - this screw up puts the Lenovo in the grand hall of manufacturing failures.

Hello,

same issue as all the others here. 

The solution with the deactivated network card may be working. My yoga started with unaouthorised but deactivated card. Hopefully it may be enough to cover the right pin to get it working.

And yes it seems to be very difficult to get the card from medion germany. But after the third request, i was able to buy the card. They delivered it and it seems to be working like a charm. Not the ceapest, but hey, now it works.

For all the others with no hope: maybe try a modifyed bios. If you find the right thread, you may be able to get every card working.

I really don't see the value of the whitelist. If there are people who are smart enough to change the wireless card, they are also smart enough to buy the right card. And if the whitelist exists only to make us buy the cards from lenovo, then where can we buy it? There are enough people willing to buy this card. The only achievements of the whitelist are angry people who never want to buy a ideapad or a yoga again.