USB Port Mod (for 600m/D600)

First off: This mod does not give me an additional USB port which can be used in conjunction with the other USB ports. It only "moves" one of the USB ports from the back to the side. mmkay? Then let's a go:

I love my 600m but one of the things that irks me about it is the lack of a side USB port (it has only a stacked pair at the back). I have to hunt for one or turn the notebook around whenever I want to plug in my thumb drive. And if the thumb drive is plugged into the bottom port while the notebook is on my lap, it hits my thigh.

So when I opened up my notebook I noticed that there is an opening inside the motherboard brace that looks like it'd fit another USB port:



And there is also space for it on the chassis itself:



Perhaps original design plans had an adddional USB port there (read: Delli being cheap here), 600m shares its brace with another notebook that has the extra USB port on the side, or maybe there are plans to add one in the future. Whatever, I decided to add one on myself.

First, I built my own bare female ( ) USB "cable" which consists of wires soldered to the 4 pins and covered with some epoxy for protection:



The toughest part was the mounting of this module to the motherboard brace. The port has to be very sturdy to withstand the forces of plugging in and out of the USB devices. I've considered a few ways to do the mount, but epoxy seemed like the best choice because of the complexity of the mount:



Next I routed the wires through the top and bottom of the motherboard:





And soldered the wires to the pins of the bottom USB port:



Finally, I cut out a hole for the port in the plastic chassis and voila...like you never knew it wasn't there before:







As I said at the beggining, this extra port can't be used with the bottom USB port at the same time because they're on the same bus. You can use both just not at the same time. It does not affect the top port in any way.

I can't imagine anyone doing the same mod - it's much more difficult than outlined here. But it may give you an idea for a similar mod - say an internal USB bluetooth or a hard drive. You will have to sacrifice a USB port however - not a problem if you have 4. If anyone needs the details (parts, specific procedures, resources) ask it here.

I'm getting some love here I see. Hee hee.

Btw, I don't reccomend that anyone will do this mod and if you do I am not responsible for any damage you'll make to either your laptop or yourself. Though I only had the mod for two days (and I'm lovin it!! Oprah style!!), I probably wouldn't do it (ok so I lie ) again if I knew how much time it would take. You can learn from my mistakes thou.

Those anatomy lessons never were my forte

The thight area inside the notebook was tough to work in. Still, I found more space inside my notebook to squeeze in a couple of additional mods.

Mike, even on the newer latitudes there is no d/bay connector. Dell is phasing it out it seems to me.

Yes. I even thought about putting a small usb hub circuit board between one of the existing usb ports and the extra one. But the biggest hurdle in most laptop mods is the space - there just isn't enough.

This and the Bluetooth mod I did may not be feasible for most. I am currently working on another mod that hopefully will be easier to do and not be specific to a particular model.

I have a 8600 with the legacy ports at work and use the serial port to transfer the code back and forth to the CNC machine. Use the parallel inteface for my SCSI printer and scanner. And the IR port for my Zire 71 palm