Hi. I have a laptop Acer 3620 that came with an Atheros wireless card.
The card has two little "ports" (don't know how else to call them - any suggestions?) that are rotulated one with "Main" and the other with "Aux".
Two cables from the laptop plug into this ports. One gray (to the main one) and the other black (to the aux one) - although it might be that my memory fails me. The issue is that I "accidentally" cross over the cables but the laptop still managed to connect to the access point and everything... I mean, no matter how I plug the cables, the card works normally.
Is this behavior expected??? And, which one is the right way for plugging the cables.

Thanks.

i'm guessing, but the aux is probably for the microphone and main is for the cdrom, or vice versa. IMOP the easiest way to see if you have them hooked up right it to put in an audio cd and play it.

I am not familar with Acer laptops however Atheros is a chipset ie the electronics inside. A make / model of the PCMCIA card would help. What is confusing is that a wireless card would not typically have any external connections to the laptop since the antenna is integrated into the card itself. A quick google for the 3620 indicates it has an integrated wireless adapter.

Where do these cables plug into the laptop? Any additional information you provide in a link?

chrisortis: I'm talking about an internal wireless card. Nothing to do with audio or the cdrom

michaelk: It's an internal wireless card. And according to whay I've investigated, all internal wireless cards have these two "ports" [again, don't know if that´s the correct name for them]

Thanks for the interest. Anyhow, I searched for pictures of laptops assembly (at repair4laptop.org) and found out that the gray cable plugs into the "main" port and the black one into the "aux" port.

They are connectors... no matter how you hook them is fine... cable routing is more of an issue but you really don't have much choice in these cases (internal laptop cards/antennea)... they are usually routed to the lid and along the edge of the screen (so they are vertical). Basically the second connection is usually redundant and can sometimes pick up a better signal and will switch to it.

lol, sorry i misread the post.

those cables go to antenna's, i don't believe it matters which order as, it will select the best signal. From my experience main goes to the antenna behind the lcd

Thanks guys. That actually resolves my doubts