wireless card,Old one has 2 terminals, new one has 3 terminals. whats going on.

[astone1935]

Bought new wireless card . New card has Three terminals Old Card has Two Terminals .
What terminal do I use?
Toshiba 215A

 

[R_1]

what is the model of the old card and what is the model of the new card?

 

[Solandri]

You should be able to connect the two antenna leads to any two of the three terminals. Technically only one antenna needs to be connected for it to work (when I accidentally broke an antenna cable on my laptop, I ran with a single antenna for a couple years.)

On the two terminal WiFi cards, the antennas are usually oriented perpendicular to each other. That way, no matter which you orient the laptop, one antenna is (usually) in the proper orientation for a good signal. The newer 2-antenna and 3-antenna WiFi cards are usually 802.11ac with SU-MIMO. They use the extra antennas to transmit multiple signals over the same frequency. The signals are distinguished from each other by the slightly different signal strength on each antenna (indicating they're taking different paths).

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Two antennas/paths = 2x the bandwidth. Three antennas/paths = 3x the bandwidth. So by hooking up just two antennas you're limiting yourself to 2x MIMO. So your max potential bandwidth will be slightly lower than what it could be (assuming your router even supports 3x MIMO). It'll still be plenty fast.