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Notebook Upgrades: Hacking your Dell/Compaq/Toshiba
David Steele writes "Ever wondered what you could do to prolong the life of your notebook? Or upgrade it to meet today's standards? Or maybe you want to turn your mid-range notebook into a high-end model? Hardware Analysis has an article up that takes a a closer look at the available options."
The second hardest part is running your website off it when it's slashdotted. :)
Dunno about upgrading it (well, a tiBook with 1gig of RAM and OS X is pretty much as sweet a platform for my work as I'll ever need), but I've been designing a new cover for the screenlid that protects things a bit better.
...
I'm going to coat the entire outside surfaces of my tiBook with the same material that's used in industrial-strength warehouse floors - gripping material - basically, rubberized grit.
That way, it'll be a *lot* better protected than the existing metal exterior, which is sexy at first, but over time rapidly deteriorates as life goes by... if you're getting a tiBook, get used to having to keep it clean. It loves grime.
I'll probably customize the logo too, while I'm at it. As much as I love Apple, I hate being a walking billboard for them, so I'm going to cut a smaller logo template as part of my modification, and use the LCD-backlight shining through the Apple logo as a light source for my own design - maybe with coloring, too, we'll see how things progress.
If anyone's done anything like this already, followup with details. I'd love to know of others that are wililng to modify their tiBooks in kind
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Here is where one of the vitures of Mac PowerBooks comes through -- Upgradeability.
The examples abound: before I retired it, my old 1400CS had been upgraded from it's stock 117mhz 603e CPU to a 366 G3, and G4 upgrades are nearly availble for the 'Wallstreet' Line, that debued with 233 mhz 7400 CPUs.
The upgradeability is probably not due to the hardware as much as the scope; there are a million-and-one difference makes of x86 notebooks, while Apple is the only real manufacturer of mobile PowerPC hardware, so hardware developers spend a lot more time on one specific model, developing upgrades. If memory serves, this began with the PB 520 in 1993 which started out with a 25mhz 68040 and can be taken all the way up to a 183mhz 604e.
Of course, Powerbooks can't run Windows Natively, and some people still don't think that the MacOS is a *real* OS, even though the only two OS options you have for a Powerbook are MacOS and Linux.
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Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
From what I've read on the Dell forums (I have the I8k too), you CAN upgrade from an ATI to NVidia GeForce Go, by replacing the video card in the socket. Several people have reported successfully upgrading, although it does void your warranty. I believe the video chip is for sale, in the refurbished sales category, if I remember correctly.
-Maher-
I reciently upgraded my Vaio 505VE laptop. It was not the most easy thing in the world, but possible.
Here are the things you need to know about:
If you have fried the laptop power supply cord and need a replacement, Targus makes a laptop power supply replacement. The web page at http://www.targus.com/ does *not* list the plug end you will need for the 505VE. (It is weird and non-standard.) The plug number you will need to order is number 62. It costs as much as Sony's charger, but has much more use since you can use it with all sorts of other devices.
Memory replacement:
Kingston makes a memory module for the 505VE that is much less than what Sony charges. They also have a lifetime waranty. Buy the 64 meg module. Two 32 meg modules do not equal one 64 meg module. Each is actually two weird chip-like things. If you get the 32 meg set hoping to just get another 32 meg later, you will find that does not work and you will have wasted your money. You can only expand the 505VE to 128 megs.
To open the 505VE, turn the laptop over and remove the screws with an arrow AND a dot next to them. Make sure you do not lose the screws. (A saki cup or other small cup is helpful.) Turn over the lattop and carefully remove the keyboard. It should slide up and out. Remove the screws under the metal plate on the left. The modules plug in under that plate. Carefully put everything back together and it should work.
Replacing the hard drive:
You can upgrade the hard drive. (Sony's web page says you cannot.) Good luck finding one that is bigger though. the 505VE uses a Toshiba 8.45mm laptop drive. It is the thinnest laptop drive made, other than the IBM microdrive. (Which is REALLY tiny.) I have heard that you can use a 9.5mm, but I have never tried it. Toshiba has an 8.1 gig drive that size. The specs are only listed on their Japanese web pages, not on the American. The only company I could find that had one was Atlantic ComputerTech in Brooklyn NY. (I am not certain of the model number. it is in my laptop.)
Getyting the drive in your laptop requires a great deal of care and patience. You will need to remove all of the screws out of the back of the laptop. You then need to remove the keyboard and remove more screws. You then can pry the laptop housing apart at the bottom by about one inch. You need to remove a couple of screws holing the drive into place and carefully unplug it. be careful as there is a fragile cable that connects to the power switch. Once the drive is removed, you can unscrew it from the metal mounting plate and put in the new drive. Put everything back together.
Installing Linux on the 505VE:
You can only boot off the CD-ROM if you are using a Sony CD-ROM drive. (And it is more expensive than the normal drive.) After you boot off the disk, when you get a boot prompt (under Redhat it will ask if you want expert, text or graphical install), type "linux ide=0x180". This give it the non-standard i/o port location of the cd-rom drive. If you do not do this, the drive will stop working when it tries to figure out what ide devices you have.
Hopefully that will help. The 505VE is a nice laptop. Battery life sucks. Sony reams you on every part you have to buy seperatly. Other than that it has been a good laptop.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Well, here are some of the things I use my laptop for:
1. Code perl while riding a train to downtown Portland.
2. Debug C++ apps in the coffee shop.
3. Read Slashdot while taking a dump (Thanks to 802.11 wireless networking).
I have noticed that I am more productive when I change the enviroment I work in, regularly.
(thanks to my student wife who offered to
:-P
drive!)
Student wife eh? is that simaler to Student Teacher, Student Driver etc? if so, how do I send mine to wife class?
Don't Tread on Me
It's possible. We dismantled a laptop at our facility here because of (what we thought was) a dead screen. The only two leads coming from the LCD were for power and VGA. Power was easy enough to splice in, but the VGA cable was a ribbon cable, as I imagine most are. It was all a task of trial and error, figuring out which trace matched to which pin on a standard 15 pin D-shell connector.
If you're lucky, or know people, you can sometimes find white papers or tech-specs on those "pinouts". I've only done it once, but I bet there's a lot of similarity within brands or even in laptops in general. If I can find my notes from back then I'll post the process we used to attatch the ribbon to the D-shell.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
it appears that MOST of this laptop can be upgraded. I saw an ebay ad talking about upgrading the video "card" and it had a link to the Dell site, which I listed above.
I have not tried this myself, but am very anxious to upgrade my cpu, once I can find one that is faster than what I currently have; fast enough to justify the risk of opening my laptop, that is.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
About a year ago I "hot rodded" my 4 year old IBM Thinkpad which started out life as a P-133 w/16 MB RAM and 2 GB HD.
I was able to find info on IBM's web pages http://www-1.ibm.com/support/ to change the dip switches for the clock ratio and the CPU voltage. I bought a used AMD K6-233 CPU off of Ebay for $30, a 32 MB RAM upgrade from McGlen Micro http://www.mcglen.com/, and a 6 GB Fujitsu HD from a local store and upgraded it in an afternoon.
Because I was not willing to clip the pin on the CPU I am limited to 200 MHz as the dip switch settings did not support 3.5 clock multiplier, and the backplane is limited to 66 MHz. But the increase in raw CPU speed was 50%, and with the extra RAM (48 MB total) even WinDOZE 98 was able to perform acceptably well.
By adding the 6 GB HD I had room for both the WinDOZE and RH 6.1 (Cartman) and all the apps I wanted.
A full install of Office 2K and Star Office 5 allow me compatibility where ever I roam.
Now if I could just upgrade the 56K modem with "portable" DSL when I travel....
It was telling us what we already know : that with a laptop you can upgrade the RAM and the hard drive -- both of those operations take about 10 minutes.
To be fair, the part about upgrading the processor was *uber* cool -- I certainly thought that one wan't able to remove a mobile PIII from its mobo. But what I would like to see is a novel cooling method for a 1GHz PIII installed into a chassis originally not meant to take that much heat. (such as mine, A dell latitude L400, which IMHO is just slighly less sexy than the venerable TiBook.)
Another thing I'd be interested to see is how to play around with the mobo and its components; with integrated everything, laptop mobo's are the most expensive part of the machine next to the TFT -- and when one component breaks, the WHOLE THING has to be replaced.
I'd like to see if there are any solutions for this particular problem -- THAT would be laptop hacking.
I know I personally have a grave fear of hacking around in my laptops innards, partly because it is a relatively expensive device, but also because I know next to nothing about how it is put together, how the components interact and how the damn thing /works/ in general (wheras I will cheerfully crack open a PC and will feel confident about violating the warranty many times over in order to figure out how it works, how to fix things, etc.)
Does anybody else share this laptop apprehension? ; ) Has anybody out there conquered their laptop's guts and become confident/skilled in do-it-yourself repairs?
-q
Delete Windows, install *Linux or *BSD.
I've got a '486DX4-75 (NEC Versa 2000C); my wife has a P-120 (NEC Versa 4080H). The two of them handle primary and secondary DNS for several domains (yes, we have other secondaries that are geographically and topologically distant), as well as WWW and SMTP for those domains.
Both are a minimum of 5 years old now. Both were bought secondhand. When my Windows-using friends say things like "Well, I've got this old machine that's only a PentiumII-300," I just laugh.
Sony Vaio notebooks are really neat, especially the super-slim ones.
Newer models can receive a landing station, with a DVD/CD burner, and everything you need to make it a full featured computer.
In all Vaios, upgrading the memory is trivial, because the slot can be easily accessed by removing some screws. This operation is also documented by Sony.
And as we're talking about memory, the Memory Stick cards are also excellent to store private data like SSH keys. They can be used in any operating system, because they are seen as regular drives, FAT-formatted. Plug the card, mount it, and it works. Excellent.
But some times ago, I decided to upgrade the internal hard drive. First surprise : on the Sony web site, Sony says that this operation is impossible. Damn! Changing the hard drive, impossible? What the hell?
In fact, it's possible, but it's a very delicate operation. I did it on a PCG Z600 RE laptop. First, you have to remove all screws. Easy. Then, you have to remove the plastic protections on the left and on the right of the screen (at the extremity of the power supply) . It's hard to do without breaking them. Moreover the speakers are at the same place, and they are very fragile. So you have to remove the plastic protection with extreme care to avoid ripping the speakers.
Finally, you can remove the keyboard, to discover new screws that have to be removed. Once removed, you can lift the mainboard and.... too late! The mainboard and the base of the notebook case are linked by tiny ribbon cables. If you lift the mainboard too much, these ribbon cables are going out, and plugging them back is very difficult. So, lift the mainboard, but carefully.
The hard disk is screwed in a metallic slot. But to remove it you have to remove the screws. 4 screws, 2 easily accessible (on the front), 2 difficult to unscrew (on the back) . Use a screwdriver that attracts metal, to avoid losing screws. And have someone help you to lift the mainboard while you are unscrewing the drive.
It took me 4 hours to change the drive. So it's not impossible as sony states, but it's long and stressing.
For everything else, I enjoy this laptop a lot. BeOS, QNX, OpenBSD, Linux and Windows installs properly on it. The "jog dial" rotative button is recognized on Linux, hibernation works with all operating systems, the built-in network card is a standard EEPRO 100 chipset (so no compatibility problem), and I've no problem with the sound chip, either.
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