HP Pavilion tx1000 Upgrade

While performing a repair on the HP Pavilion tx1000, I noticed that there were unused trace for a mini PCIe slot and a SIM card holder. I ordered the parts from mouser.com and as soon as the parts arrived, I got to work:

• C&K Components Memory Card Connectors Conn Smart Card Hinged 6Pin Smd , Mouser Part #611-CCM03-3013LFTR10
• Molex PCI Express / PCI Connectors MINI PCI EXP. 0.8MM PITCH, 9.90MM HEIGHT, Mouser Part #538-48338-0099

Below are pictures of the SIM card holder, C&K Components Memory Card Connectors Conn Smart Card Hinged 6Pin Smd. There are only 6 pins for the SIM card, but there are 8 leads. 2 of the leads you won't use, but the part will line up with the trace on the board.

Below are pictures of the tall mini PCIe slot.

I was being lazy and I didn't feel like taking the computer apart to get the connectors in, so I unplugged the computer, took out the battery, opened the HDD bay, took out the hard drive and soldered the parts in with the computer fully assembled. There's just enough space to get the parts in without having to disassemble the HP Pavilion tx1000.

I started with the mini PCIe slot because I was worried there wouldn't be enough space with the SIM card holder installed first. Make sure you lay down some flux, I use no-clean flux because the resin based flux is really sticky and is hard to remove. Start tacking the anchors and then work on the pins. If you have a good soldering iron, I use the Weller WESD51 Digital Soldering Station (see here on Amazon), for the pins, all you have to do is gently press down on the pin feet (they curve out a little) and you'll hear a squeak and that's your indication that the feet have made contact and that it's soldered onto the board correctly.

Next, I moved on to the SIM card holder. Line up the pins, tack 1 of the pins, I started from the left side where it was the tightest (see picture below), verify that all the pins are still lined up and then press down on all the pins to connect them to the board.

In my experience, it's hard to tell if the manufacturer actually enabled the slot (connected the wires required to send power to the mini PCIe slot), so I plugged in a USB based Broadcom mini PCIe WLAN card. Once I turned on the machine, I got the dreaded "105-Unsupported wireless broadband device detected" error message. Well the good news is that the slot WORKS! But the bad news is that the slot checks the type of device inserted in the slot. Oh well, at least it was fun. Maybe I'll look into a BIOS hack for the tx1000 to remove the restriction, but for now, it's OK. This was just for fun.