Adding eSATA to an Acer Aspire One (tnkgrl)
March 11, 2009
If adding a touchscreen to your 8.9-inch Acer Aspire One wasn’t enough, tnkgrl Mobile has put together the 4th part in their ongoing series on modding the AAO.
This time around, it’s a really major mod/upgrade, but it wasn’t as difficult as some mods. She’s added an external Serial ATA (eSATA) connection to her Aspire One. Obviously this invalidates your warranty.
Note that her Aspire One is the Solid State Drive/SSD/SSD version which uses a ZIF connector (which allows for 1.8″ PATA hard drives). This leaves an unused SATA interface inside the Aspire One.
Using an eSATA socket from a PCI-slot bracket, and some shielded cable (it must be shielded), she was able to fairly easily connect the onboard SATA connection to an eSATA socket. The real work was in finding a place for the eSATA socket to be mounted, without it obstructing anything else. She mounted it above the Secure Digital (SD) slot on the left side of the Aspire One.
In the video, you can see her clever mod that allows you to use the WiFi switch to turn on/off the 3G mobile broadband as well (see part 3 of her modding series).
Read:
- tnkgrl Mobile
- Video at qik.com
- Photo gallery at flickr
Acer Aspire One With a Touchscreen
February 13, 2009
We’ve seen Samsung NC10s with touchscreens so why not see one of the original 8.9″ Acer Aspire Ones with a touchscreen. This is using a kit that is similar to the previously mentioned Samsung NC10 kit - it’s from Hoda Technology, and it’s sold through fidohub, and like the NC10 kit (as well as the MSI Wind U100, Inspiron Mini 9, and Eee PC touchscreen kits), it’s also available for $96 plus shipping and handling.
As SlashGear mentions, it’s basically a plug-and-play kit - no soldering, no cutting or splicing of cables. You just have to be willing to take your Aspire One apart.
Besides the fact that you are voiding your warranty, they mention a 15% reduction in brightness due to the touchscreen. You do get an additional three internal USB connections from the new controller. Included with the kit is a stylus (Pen-One) and they manufacturer claims it’s compatible with Linux and Mac OS X as well as Windows (and Windows 7 has increased touchscreen capabilities).
This is a resistive touchscreen - it requires pressure from a finger or stylus.
This is probably one of the best touchscreen tutorials for the Acer Aspire One (if not the best), as they walk you through the entire process from start-to-finish, with photos of all of the steps. Given the relatively low cost, it’d be great if Acer (and MSI and some of the others) would roll out touschreen/Tablet PC convertible netbooks, similar to the upcoming Asus Eee PC T91 Touch.
Read:
- notebook italia (translated - English)
via SlashGear
Samsung NC10 - With a Touchscreen
February 5, 2009
While it’s still not a “convertible” Tablet PC like the upcoming Asus Eee PC T91 Touch, some folks over at Netbook Mag have added a touchscreen to the 10.2-inch Samsung NC10.
The conversion to touchscreen used a kit from fidohub, a company offering touchscreen conversion kits for several types of netbooks, for reasonable prices (and the displays/conversions support Windows, Mac, and Linux). The offerings included touchscreen conversions for the MSI Wind U100, Samsung NC10, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Lenovo S9 and S10 and some of the Eee PC 1000 series.
This is a full/in-depth tutorial from start to finish, and is not for those uncomfortable with taking one of these apart.
Read: Netbook Mag
Apple MacBook - 6GB of RAM
November 1, 2008
For those of you wanting more than 4GB of RAM with Mac OS X, and wanting to buy one of the new 13.3″ Apple MacBooks (or one of the 15″ MacBook Pros that came out last month, you might just be in luck.
Apple will tell you that the maximum amount of memory is 4GB of the 1066MHz DDR3 (aka PC3-8500) RAM. Mac Rumors is reporting that 8GB of RAM causes stability problems with OS X on MacBook Pros , however 6GBs works just fine (8GB is supported by the NVIDIA chipset).
If you are willing to pay $675 (one 4GB DIMM and one 2GB DIMM) RAMJET Inc. will set you up with the proper non-stacked DIMMs (which run cooler and require less power than normal stacked DIMMs).
This is tested on Model 4,1. You can find the memory and more information at:
http://www.ramjet.com/mbib.asp.
Read: ZDNet.com via Mac Rumors
New Apple MacBook - Disassembly, Review (PC Mag)
October 16, 2008
It’s now a given - as soon as a new laptop that’s been hyped up quite a bit is released, that somebody will get one and then take it apart. The new 13.3″ Apple MacBook is no exception.
KODAWARISAN quickly unboxed their new aluminum MacBook (or Macbook (Late 2008) as it’s called) and took it apart. You can clearly see the new design for easy access to the battery and hard drive. They’ve also got a good photo of the new NVIDIA GPU alongside the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU.
Meanwhile, PC Magazine wasted no time in getting their review up. They gave it a 3.5 out of 5, mentioning the design and easy access to the hard drive among other things (it’s a big deal as far as access - in the past, it was not easy to access the drives in the “pro” models). They included some benchmarks against other 13.3″ laptops as well. They did confuse the point of Apple upgrading to DisplayPort and dropping the FireWire port - the two are not related, and I’m kind of surprised they would confuse those two technologies.
16GB - 64GB SSDs for Asus Eee PCs
October 8, 2008
For those who have bought an Asus Eee PC and desire more storage, Super Talent is hoping to help you out.
They’ve announced mini PCI-Express Solid State Drives (SSDs) in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB sizes. These were designed specifically to fit the Eee PC series, specifically the Asus Eee PC 701, 702, 900, 901, 903, 905 and 1000.
All three models read at 40MB/sec and write at 15MB/sec. Super Talent believes they’ll have them in mass production in November.
Models w/Street Price:
- FPM16GHAE: 16GB , $53
- FPM32GHAE: 32GB, $79
- FPM64GHAE: 64GB, $149
Read: SuperTalent Press Release
Thanks to Khanj for the link
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - GPS
October 7, 2008
A forum user over at MyDellMini has decided that they needed an integrated GPS solution for their 8.9″ Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.
Seeing as how it’s not offered as part of the standard options available to Mini 9 customers, they’ve decided to add it themselves. They picked up a USB GPS receiver with a SkyTraQ chipset, that supports assisted GPS (AGPS). They took their Mini 9 apart and found a spot underneath the palm rest where the GPS receiver would not be blocked.
Using some creative soldering and the WWAN’s USB connection, they were able to get it installed and working. Once the Mini 9 was put back together, you couldn’t even tell it had been modified.
Read: MyDellMini.com
Acer Aspire One - Replacing SSD with 1.8″ HDD
August 16, 2008
A few days ago we mentioned that tnkgirl Mobile had been modding their SSD-based 1.8″ Acer Aspire One to handle bluetooth. Now they’ve since published a how-to guide (complete with lots of pictures).
The SSD is slightly smaller in the area where storage is located, compared to the HDD version (which takes a 2.5″ Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive). As such, the space is limited and you are basically having to work with 1.8″ size devices.
tnkgrl Mobile replaced their SSD with a 1.8″ 60GB Samsung HDD. The Samsung drive has 8MB of buffer and spins at 4200rpm.
Read: tnkgrl Mobile
