Modding your Dell laptop - Page 50

I'll give you the breakdown what the two LEDs mean above the ethernet port on some laptops when looked at from the back:

Right, activity, LED has always a yellow (kind of orangy which is close to the yellow color indicating a wireless connection color but not quite) light and whenever it blinking it indicates network (either wired or wireless) activity.

Left light - Status LED:

- green: a 10Mbit ethernet connection
- orange: a 100Mbit ethernet connection
- blue (not verified) (for those models that have gigabit ethernet): a 1000Mbit (Gigabit) connection

- yellow (looks closer to orange): a wireless connection

So if you're moving one of them the left one would be more convenient/unobtrusive.

interesting, thanks for the breakdown, id probably move the right (activity) light since i only really use wireless

no dice the LED for BT is on a board connected to a ribbon cable and the ethernet is a solid block of aluminum, so i dont think ill be able to get wires connected to either of them, oh well

Bummer. That would have been neat! (if not a little distracting)

There is a program for linux called TLEDS that blinks your keyboard LEDs on packet sending and receiving:
http://users.tkk.fi/~jlohikos/tleds_orig.html

Don't know if one exists for windows.

thats awesome, but i dont have linux, is there a windoze port yet?

Has anyone done the 8600-->d800 chassis mod and ran into suspend mode problems? Ever since I changed the palmrest on my 8600 to the d800 palmrest, I havent been able to go into suspend mode. Whenever I press the suspend key, or let it timeout into suspend mode, it shuts off the monitor, but then stalls at the point where your power light begins to pulse. Thee power light stays on and then the only way I can get it to go back to normal is by doing a hard shut down and power on.

Any ideas guys?

Maybe something isn't connected correctly??

I've read most of this thread, and I must say, it's extremely long. I have a question though: How do you remove the "badge" on the i600m?

Has anyone tried painting their laptop? I've already bought paint and a plastick shell kit to paint but I don't know how to do the fan CPU fan assembly. It does not look like there is an easy way to remove the fan from the plastic grill. How did Spiike manage to paint the CPU fan cover?

this is prolly a longshot, but does anyone have an extra custom (from heath) propeller badge that they want to sell.... PM me.

Hi, I tried searching this forum, but could find anything. My question is, can the LED mod be applied to the 9300? If so, how? Thank you for your time.

It shouldn't be laptop-specific. Basically the LED mod is several LEDs placed in the various outlets (speaker and fan holes) and powered by the usb ports.

And are the USB ports still available for use?

I believe so. Its just takes a little power, doesn't disable the ports.

Anyone have any links on I6000 mods, im curious

It hasn't been long enough since its introducton for i6000-specific mods to be developed. The led mod, painting mod can easily be adapted to the i6000 (or not).

Ya know, windows xp can display this computer icon in the system tray indicating a network connection. It turns light blue from dark blue on network activity.

Aye... But alas my laptop is too new to be ripping it apart for a paint job or led mod , plus i like the silver, and my Cherrywood quicksnap cover ( makes it look more bulky, but it helps protect it from scratches, and seems to help with pressure.

Newbie here.. I have a 600m, I want to make it look more professional-- by simple modificatons, such as a badge change-- where could I find premade badges or custom ones, what arm, rest can I switch too, bezel, any parts that could be swapped easily to make it remove its cheap outside apperance.

Thanks,
Adam

1. Resurrected from page 20.

I only wish. No such thing. The rumor refers to the white LED above the display in IBMs (I think it's available in the T42s) to light the keyboard in the dark (called a ThinkLight, thank you Michell0). That was specially made for the military about 2 years before they released it to the public. It's pretty nice, too; some models run from a light sensor, others from a switch.
2. Fett, that Family Guy site owns.
3. On the USB mod, you're going to have a lot of trouble adding more than 1 port. In the BIOS, Dell left 1 "phantom" port just incase something went wrong with the software for the others. The software would autodetect the port which corresponded to the bad spot in the software as the 5th USB. However, this means you'd have to get a new set of BIOS (or edit the Dell ones if you're that good) to add more than 1 additional USB port.
That said, if you can figgure out a way to get the software to think you have a single USB port with a hub attached (multiple content streams in through one connection to the system board), you're golden, though your speed would then be limited.
4. It takes a really long time to read through all these posts.

Now on to my stuff. I've never done any laptop modding before, just my old desktop. I'm not allowed to do anything drastic like repainting, but I might get away with the badge mods mentioned here, and I'm definately changing the status LEDs to red (enough of your blue nonesense, I'm under blue flourescent lights all day long).
I have an M70, but I'd assume the mods would be fairly generic regardless of your model.
Also: has anybody seen a replacement for the hard cover on the back of the M70? It's great, keeps errant fingers on the back from pushing through to the screen, but I don't know that I want "precision" written 10 million times across the back of my laptop. Thoughts?