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Inspiron 8200 LED Mods

post #1 of 18
5/7/05 at 11:10pm
Thread Starter 
Newbie here. I just bought a laptop a few weeks ago (Inspiron 8200, 1.7, 512, 80gb), and have already modded the thing.
I found some Surface Mount LED's on www.lsdiodes.com to replace the boring green ones that the Inspiron came with.
I got white for power, and blue for the HDD, num lock, caps lock, and scroll lock lights. I left the battery status light alone since it was a dual color LED and it's rarely on anyway.


Closeup of the new Surface Mount Led(s)


First LED Soldered on to the board. I'm usually pretty good w/ a soldering iron, but these things are so tiny it's tough to be precise. It didn't help any that these new ones were just a tad smaller than the originals.


Board installed, and LED's lit


Bezel installed, and the final result.


It's nothing exciting, but I thought it was a cool change compared to the boring green color that was in there previously.
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post #2 of 18
5/7/05 at 11:14pm
thats good work, but doesnt making those types of changes void the warranty?
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post #3 of 18
5/7/05 at 11:18pm
Thread Starter 
If there was a warranty left it would void it, but it only had a year warranty on it. I bought it used and it was originally purchased back in 02 or 03.
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post #4 of 18
5/7/05 at 11:24pm
Impressive soldering/desoldering work. What did you use for soldering in such a small area? A special soldering needle?
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post #5 of 18
5/7/05 at 11:36pm
Thread Starter 
Nope, just a basic 30W pencil soldering iron w/ a new standard tip.
It would have been nicer to have better tip and iron to use, but this one did the trick. My fiancee wants me to do this to her Inspiron 8100 now.
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post #6 of 18
5/8/05 at 7:03am
Cool stuff, the blue looks much nicer than the green.
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post #7 of 18
7/4/05 at 7:24am
Wow, very nice mod! Just one question, which LEDs did you use exactly? The site you gave has two surface mount blue leds and two white ones of different sizes.

0603 Blue
0805 Blue

and

0603 White
0805 White

The 0805 ones are the slighty bigger ones.

Thanks!
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post #8 of 18
7/6/05 at 11:05pm
nice, wish i knew about circuit board shit, but maybe not. still nice thou =)
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post #9 of 18
7/6/05 at 11:38pm
Awesome job man, looks so much better than the standard green.
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post #10 of 18
7/7/05 at 12:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bugg
Cool stuff, the blue looks much nicer than the green.
Cooler but can be more annyoing as well. Story from Wired Magazine. Google cache of the article:

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox-a
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox-a
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post #11 of 18
7/7/05 at 2:57am
RED that'll be nice and then u can dremel out the Dell logo and put in some nice red back glow....... hehe
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post #12 of 18
7/7/05 at 4:37am
I wish my 8600 case was white/red
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post #13 of 18
9/29/05 at 8:35am
Damn, I hate to dig up and old thread but that looks cool. My i8200 is under warranty till mid 2007 though (and believe me, I hang on to that warranty for dear life). So no mod magic for me.
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post #14 of 18
10/17/05 at 12:49pm
meh, if something happened to the computer you could always just swap the LED's abck before you send it to the depot .. if you have the skills to do it once you can easily do it again. =D
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post #15 of 18
12/30/05 at 12:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by laughterkillsme
meh, if something happened to the computer you could always just swap the LED's abck before you send it to the depot .. if you have the skills to do it once you can easily do it again. =D
Easier would be to locate a second board on eBAY, and mod that one. Warranty issue? Just swap the original unmodded power board back in.

My $.03 (tx incl.)
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post #16 of 18
12/30/05 at 3:47am
Impressive soldering job!!!
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post #17 of 18
12/30/05 at 4:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilZardoz
Damn, I hate to dig up and old thread but that looks cool. My i8200 is under warranty till mid 2007 though (and believe me, I hang on to that warranty for dear life). So no mod magic for me.
thats a long warranty... the only reason I don't get that long of a warranty cause things break down right after the first year and its either too expensive to fix or not worth it at all.. or theres a cheap new laptop right down the corner
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post #18 of 18
12/30/05 at 11:13am
Very nice! Congrats on a great job!!
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