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.

Acer Aspire 4810T Repair and Upgrade

Let me start off by saying I got a hand-me-down Acer Aspire 4810T in pretty bad condition. Bottom case holding down the hinge assembly was broken on both sides making it difficult to open the laptop without feeling like the whole thing was going to break. Also the AC adapter is missing.

Lenovo Yoga 710-11ISK Upgrade

Over the 2016 Labor Day weekend, I stopped by Best Buy and saw that they had a table of open box items. On the table was an 11 inch Lenovo Yoga 710-11ISK for $419. The Yoga 710 was on sale for $449 new. I was going to buy it new, but Best Buy was SOLD OUT of the new Lenovo Yoga 710-11ISK. Instead they sold me the open box for $350, boom, done, bought.

Processor: Intel Pentium 4405Y (1.50GHz 1866MHz 2MB)
Operating system: Windows 10 Home x64
Display: 11.6" FHD IPS LED Backlit Multitouch (1920x1080) with integrated camera
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 515
Memory: 4.0GB LPDDR3-1866 MHz (Onboard)
Hard Drive: 128GB SSD
Optical Drive: No Optical Disk Drive
Network Card: 802.11 AC (1x1)
Bluetooth: Bluetooth Version 4.1
Warranty: One year
Battery: 4 Cell 40 Watt Hour Li-Polymer
Keyboard: English Keyboard

Dell Latitude D630 Cooling Mod and Memory Upgrade

The Dell Latitude D630 is a fantastic machine, the model that I have is a Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 2.60 GHz with 4GB memory. See full specifications below:

• 223-5764 : Latitude D630, Intel Core 2 Duo T9500, 2.60GHz, 800Mhz, 6M L2 Cache, Dual Core
• 310-9094 : US - System Documentation Power Cord, Latitude D630
• 420-8734 : Vista Business Service Pack 1 with media, English, Latitude
• 420-8010 : Roxio Creator Dell Edition,9.0 Dell Latitude/Mobile Precision
• 430-2375 : Intel 4965 WLAN (802.11a/g/n) mini Card Latitude, Factory Install
• 320-5289 : 14.1 inch Wide Screen WXGA+ LCD for Latitude D630
• 374-7297 : CFI,B8JV01,Information,Label, Large,Factory Install
• 366-1040 : Custom Asset Report
• 365-0257 : CFI Routing SKU
• 320-5485 : 128MB NVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M Latitude D630
• 341-6439 : 80GB Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive 9.5MM, 7200RPM,Latitude
• 430-2275 : Dell Wireless 360 VSTA Bluetooth Module for Vista Latitude
• 366-1552 : PCA custom project fee
• 312-0484 : 6-Cell/56 WHr Primary Battery Latitude D630
• 420-9184 : Cyberlink Power DVD 8.1,with Media,Dell Latitude/Mobile Precision
• 366-1416 : Image Load
• 310-8768 : Internal English Keyboard for Latitude Notebooks
• 372-8900 : CFI,Information,D630,Nvidia, ONLY,Factory Install
• 313-5638 : 8X DVD+/-RW for Latitude D-Family
• 310-9096 : Resource DVD with Diagnostics and Drivers, Dell LatitudeD630 Notebook
• 310-8792 : Standard Touchpad for Latitude D630
• 330-0888 : Nylon Deluxe Top Load Carrying Case 14.1 inch for Latitude E/Mobile Precision
• 310-7283 : 65W AC Adapter for Latitude D-Family
• 366-1557 : Integration of a Service Tag o r Label
• 311-5689 : 4.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 2 DIMM for Dell Latitude Notebooks
• 310-8759 : You have chosen a Vista Basic System

Recently, it started to randomly shutdown on it's own, so I decided to open it up and see what was going on inside. Interestingly enough, I think the issue is the miniPCIe WLAN card is causing the system instability since switch to an external USB Alfa wireless adapter, the problem has gone away.

That still doesn't mean that it didn't need a good ol' fashioned cleanup job on the inside.

Windows Software 2015

My personal software list (as of 2015-12-11)

I do a lot of computer OS installations and setup, so I decided to make a list for myself so that I don't forget to install something. If you're interested, read on!

Sony VAIO Tap 11 SVT11213CXB Motherboard Upgrade

Ok, I confess, when I bought the Sony VAIO Tap 11 SVT11213CXB, I did it with the hidden agenda that I would upgrade the puny Intel Pentium 3560Y 1.2GHz processor to the Intel Core i7-4610Y 1.7GHz processor. I figured this would be possible because I saw the Sony VAIO Tap 11 teardown here on blog.sony.com.

Cost breakdown:

• Best Buy - $688.98 (with tax)
• Sony VAIO Tap 11 SVT11213CXB - $599.99
• SanDisk 64GB SDXC card - $49.99
• ebay.com
• Sony Laptop Motherboard 8GB w/ Intel i7-4610Y 1.7Ghz CPU A2040179A - $386.65

Total: $1075.63. That's not terrible. A couple of hundred dollars cheaper than getting the Core i7 version new.

I initially thought I'd be trying to find the actual Intel Core i7-4610Y BGA processor and get someone to BGA rework it on there, but would you believe that I actually found the motherboard here or search on ebay.com? Search for Intel i7-4610Y and the Sony VAIO Tap 11 motherboard pops up here and there. Good luck, if you're so inclined.

First things first, when I swapped out the motherboard, the system did NOT POWER ON. Yikes. I pulled out the motherboard and reattached all the cables probably 3 times and then ended replacing the original with no luck getting the system to power up. For some reason, I remembered that there was a reset button somewhere on the system and for those who stumble on this blog page freaking out because your system won't power up, here's what you do.

• Find the reset button (it's on the top edge to the left of the SD card slot).
• Plug the AC adapter into the Sony VAIO Tap 11.
• Get a paper clip or something that'll fit into the reset slot, and press and hold it down until the battery light to the right flashes. That'll let you know that the system is getting power and you should be able to power up the system now.

Sony VAIO VGN-FZ348E Repair

I convinced a coworker that repairing their Sony VAIO VGN-FZ348E with a distorted display instead of throwing it away was a better use of their money. When I saw the display, it displayed the typical symptoms of notebook computer whose video processor has been partially detached from the motherboard due to overheating.

Sure enough, when I got into the machine, the heatsink was caked in dust.