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Originally Posted by Hoshie
Has someone changed something on his Notebook?
Please post pictures.I had read that some Notebooks had Lights under the Keyboard..  Other made a light around the screen and the Keyboard..dont know how but they do it...  |
Modding a laptop is rather difficult, much more so than a desktop. The mods I have seen so far are basically,
1) Paint the laptop
2) Backlit case badge on LCD lid (as in, perhaps, an Alienhead or something
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3) LEDs behind the speakers, back vent, etc.
4) Backlit keyboard
5) UV paint or EL tape around the screen
6) replace fans with clear LED fans
I'm planning on doing everything except 5.
Since you expressed interest in the keyboard, the smoothest way I can think of is to use an EL sheet and cut out the parts where the key contacts are (I suggest taking all the keys off and scanning it to use as a template). Then you need to get a really small EL driver (good luck with that if you're on a budget). I would suggest one from Durel (the 306A model is perfect) or Supertex (HV830 is the best one they offer for this kind of thing). They handle 12V and 9.5V respectively. To get the 12V you need a splitter from the harddrive cable and a resistor if you get the supertex driver. Then you'd wire it through an on/off switch, fit all that into your laptop, put the keys back on, and viola. Of course, you might want to have the option to vary the intensity, so you'd need to put a potentiometer into the circuit. If you have a 7700 with only one optical drive, all of this will fit quite nicely into your second optical drive which will allow you to put the switch/potentiometer in a convenient location on the drive bezel. As you may have guessed from the level of thought I've put into this, I'm in the process of doing all this at the moment. The only thing I really can't figure out is how to modify the keys. They are opaque so you can't see through them. I considered clear keys, but nobody makes them and it would cost several thousand dollars to get a company to retool their equipment to do so. I also thought of contacting the company that Clevo buys their keyboards from, but I have no idea who that is. Then I thought ideally I would just want the letters to be clear by dremmeling them out and filling it in with a semi-transparent glue, rather than having the whole key clear, since I think this would be a nicer effect, but unfortunately you run into problems dremmeling the closed letters out (like an "O" for instance, where the middle falls out). So if anyone has suggestions on what to do with the keys, I'm all ears. As you may have guessed, of course, this will void the hell out of your warranty if you still have one. You could, however, get an external powersupply (i.e. a battery) and put it into the optical bay instead of tapping into the powersupply. You can get a 12V battery that will run this amount of EL sheet for quite a while, really. If anything went wrong with your computer later on and you needed to RMA it, you could easily swap the keyboard out and remove all the components. And no, I'm not advocating this. I'm also not advocating that you do this if you don't have any knowledge of electrical wiring since it can get quite complicated, especially with the inverter. The bad thing about the small ones I mentioned is that you basically have to construct them yourself.
The only notebook I know of that has a backlit keyboard standard is the mac. I've never had the opportunity to take one apart to see how they do it.
The other way you could backlite the keyboard is by drilling holes in it at various points and gluing microleds into place, then connect them to the back of the USB port, which gives you the 5V supply needed for newe LEDs. It definitely won't look as good though.
Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.
Edit: Oh yeah, I forget where I read about it (
www.pimprig.com forums maybe) but someone used a microcontroller to change his XPS2 leds to different colors depending on certain events. For instance, if he received a new email, they would flash blue or something, or if memory was low they would flash red, glow one color for standby, another for active, etc. Sounds pretty cool to me.
The mod I'm most interested in right now, is a software one. If anyone knows how to tell Windows XP to supply power to the PCMCIA slot even if there's nothing in it, please let me know.
I will have him do the job next summer.
