Modding your Dell laptop

This thread will be dedicated to easy to follow tutorials and discussions for modding your Dell laptop. Some ''mods,'' or alterations to your original laptop, maybe very drastic such as adding LED's and chassis conversions. Other mods maybe more subtle such as a keyboard fix. I will update this thread with tutorials of the mods I have done/will be doing as soon as I can. Please post any ideas you have for possible mods.


Tutorial status is pending. Please pm if you need them.

LED's

The LED mod

Stage one consists of 4-10 LEDs connected to the chassis. This is an example of the final product.


NOTE: IF DOING THIS MODIFICATION UNPLUG/REMOVE ALL POWER SOURCES

This is the badge with the final lighting. I dremeled the aluminum cover and the placed a cut piece of a jewel case to protect the lcd. The lcd backlight eluminates it great.


couple other pics
http://spiike.shadowdragon.net/badge2.jpg
http://spiike.shadowdragon.net/badge3.jpg


Custom badges created by Heath Satow. To request a "14 gauge 304 stainless steel" badge, go to his website http://www.publicsculpture.com/casemods.html

Making your 8600/8500 look like an M60/d800

Chassis conversion

An easy to follow tutorial on how to swap chassis from the 8600 to the d800/m60. I've included a price list of the charges I incurred. The reason for doing this conversion is explained in the description in the tutorial.

Included is an option for removing some of the squeak in the chassis. My fix will not eliminate all because there is squeaking/creaking in the lcd and in the center console/bezel around the keyboard, but for the most part my fix gets rid of around 90% of chassis creaking/squeaking.

Total costs for conversion are estimated at ~$40, which is half of the price that I payed. This is if you can find the d800 part KITS, that include all the components as a set, on ebay.

Painting your laptop

Laptop Painting

Why would someone want to paint their laptop?

1. The clearcoat hardens rock solid and reinforces the body making the body stiffer and more solid. It also gets rid of the "plastic" feel.
2. It looks pretty darn cool, and deviates from the monotonous grey laptop
3. Cheaper than most professional paintjobs which can cost in excess of 500+ dollars and you can put more coats which will provide a deeper shine and durability.
4. With the right directions, patience, and handywork you can get a pristene finish that will shine like no other.

Here are some links to excellent painting tutorials already found on the net. I basically used pc-workshop's diretions to paint mine. I might have my tutorial just supplement these because the pcworkshop does an excellent job with the step by step walkthrough.

pc-workshop <--- excellent tutorial. my inspiration and very nice pictures of spraying the paint. Use this as a compliment to my tutorial because I do not have pictures of actually spraying the paint down.

linear1.org

Cooling mod

Video Card Cooling Mod

This mod is brought to you by GMcloud and everyone that helped him create this modification. What it does is replace the generic pads between the videocard and heatsink with copper. Copper is much more heat conductive meaning heat is transferred from the videocard to the heatsink much faster. Then applying Arctic Silver compound. This compound is far superior to the compound originally found on the video cards and has a reputation of being the best conductive compound you can have on your computer.

Link to Cooling Mod tutorial

Fixes for known quality issues

Keyboard Fix

Many have claimed that the 8500/8600/D800/M60 have too much flex in the keyboard. For instance press down on the left and right shift button, the left arrow button, the esc button or the buttons surrounging the erasehead. If there is movement after the key is depressed (if you press harder) then you have flex in your keyboard. There is a simple fix for this, which would make your keyboard much more solid regardless if you previously had noticable "flexing" in your keyboard.


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Removal of excess "play" in trackstick buttons

Many have complained of excess "play," or distance the button has to be pushed down, in the eraserhead buttons. This is a simple explaination of how to fix this.

In the mod i used 3 mm washers which are less than 1mm in thickness, but the ones in the picture are actually 5mm washers. the width does not matter as long as they're about 3-5 mm. it's the thickness that matters. make sure the washers are slightly less than 1mm in thickness.

Another idea that was posed was to use the foil found on tylenol packages. then fold the foil and epoxy/superglue it to the button. Pictures of how this was done is linked here. This is provided by bache.

tutorial is up for it. I know most of you will be taken aback by my recent aggressive approach to eliminate flexing as shown in the first "after" picture, so i also added a picture of what my 8600 chassis looked like before the conversion. It is more minimalist and what the community would probably prefer to do. carvi, it will produce a noticable difference while you are typing. I did it for a friend here on campus and these were his exact words, "I do not know how I typed on this keyboard before... wow. "

Well it's been a week since I ordered the LED's and the place I ordered them from (from what I believe is a credible source) had shipped them on the 4th regular mail. So when they come in I'll write up a tutorial as soon as I can for the LED mod. I'm deciding to do the tutorial in 2 stages.

--Stage one will be LED's for the body, which will include the vents and speaker (5 LED's total), header, and a switch. All of which are connected to a usb port power source.
--Stage two will be the LED for the lcd cover. Which is attached to a 2 pin connector which can be just added on to the 20 pin header. (sounds complicated but it is really easy if you see a picture of it).

Reason for the two stages is because I need to wait for Heath to create my badge which might take some time. And since he has never made a D800/M60 badge before, I need to send him the original Dell badge. only problem is I'm still waiting for the LCD cover to come in. The ebay seller had messed up, apologized, and reshipped the item so it's comming soon.

I also have exams and deadlines approaching, so I'm trying to do this as fast as possible while maintaining my studies. I have posted approximate ETA's on each mod. Does anyone have any other ideas for modding your laptop (this includes fixes for current issues)?