Dell Inspiron 8600 Repair and Cooling Mod and Upgrade

Look at the things you can find when you go digging through closets and garages. Out springs an old Dell Inspiron 8600. I came upon this old laptop without an AC power adapter. I had to use a Targus Universal Power Adapter APM62US that I had on hand to get it powered up. It's not a bad laptop. It could do with a processor upgrade, but it works.

Specifications:

• Intel Pentium M 710 1.40GHz, Dothan, Socket 489 mPGA
• Intel i855PM chipset
• Intel 82801DB (ICH4-M) southbridge
• 1.0GB memory
• PATA/IDE HDD
• Nvidia GeForce FX Go520
• Philips CDRW/DVDROM drive
• Texas Instruments 1394 OHCI host controller
• Conexant D480 MDC V.92 FaxModem
• Broadcom 440x 10/100 ethernet controller
• Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG wireless LAN
• Texas Instruments PCI-4510 CardBus controller
• Intel 82801DB/DBM AC '97 audio controller

As you can see from the photos below the Dell Inspiron 8600 has seen some action in its lifetime. The plastic molding around the cable lock slot is cracked. Plastic around the edges of the notebook computer is worn away and a crack across the LCD back case. However, most of the damage was internal in the chassis.

The crack in the LCD back case was fixed by apply epoxy along the crack and re attaching the metal support structure along the LCD back case. The crack is still visible after the fix, but it's more rigid and the flexibility of the plastic has remained.

The part of the chassis that was attached the cable lock slot had broken off, so I reattached the cable lock slot and filled the surrounding area with J-B Weld cold weld steel reinforced epoxy. I haven't tested it exactly (meaning I didn't attach a cable lock and give it a hard tug to see if it would break off again), but it's stiff and it stays in place.

There were other areas of the chassis that were broken so I used the J-B Weld epoxy to reattach the broken areas.

While I had the machine open, I cleaned out the heatsink and fan assembly, but when looking at the heatsink, it had metal foil attached to it. I remember seeing this before on the Dell SmartStep 250N.

I peeled off the metal foil and applied Arctic Silver 5 and the notebook computer runs without problems.

In terms of upgrades, the current processor is the Intel Pentium M Processor 1.40 GHz, 1M Cache, 400 MHz FSB. Based on Intel ARK for the Banias family, the Intel Pentium M Processor 1.70 GHz, 1M Cache, 400 MHz FSB is compatible.

In terms of the HDD, the Dell Inspiron 8600 DOES support an mSATA SSD using a PATA/IDE to mSATA adapter.