AAO D250, taken apart bluetooth?! additional mini pci-e?

Hi,

I disassembled my 3 days old D250 today, because I was unstatisfied with the Atheros crap wifi in it, as I am usalyl running OSX on all my machines and I still regret to reverse and rewrite a driver for this failing chipset.


The D250 has a second mini PCI-e slot on the bottom, I suspect it to be used for the 3G models usally. Sadly I could not get any card to work in it yet. I put a dell 1490 wifi card in but had noluck yet to get it work.

i also tried to take out the switch and se if it works with sliding the wifi button to the left, but no luck here.

Anyone with a 3G device around who might be abel to supply highres shot of his mainboard front/rear? I put mine up n the wiki, I hope they wrk, my old EOS 350D does not allow me to do better pics sadly.

Other than that, some of my findings illustrated here:



That retard thing is the Atheros wifi, not replaceabel cause of it's tiny half size.



This is what I suspect to be the port for a bluetooth module, which is available as a "extra" in some D250s.

I written down some infos on how to disassemble it on my wiki, here (you can download highres pics of the mainboard there as well):
http://hax0rpedia.com/index.php/Disasse ... e_AAO_D250

Also some more pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38175080@N ... 863676070/

 

Neat post - how do you like the D250 overall? As well - I think you'll find that Intel makes a half size PCIE WiFi card:

http://www.keenzo.com/showproduct.asp?ID=3227175

I installed their 4965AGN PCIE into my One (150) and have a 3rd antenna coming in. Even with only 2 antennas, I'm sustaining 140Mbps quite a distance and several walls in between? I really had a difficult time with the throughput of the Atheros - and wanted N speed without going to a USB Wifi..

Anyway - thanks for the post!

 

Overall, well I dunno I not used it that much productive yet. I want it to work like I want it to, before I do. But it's nice and fast and keyboad is MUCH better than the EEE once I had, they suck badly (I have bigger hands than the average child, see pics )

The 4965AGN has major problems with OSX and sadly won't work correctly, if ti works, the best you will get is a half broken network without encryption, if it works even. I prefer OSX, and my set goal is to create a full functional Vanilla install working on OSX. The wifi and the eth port are the only two bad parts but they are significant.

Still there is actually this full sized slot, even thought it does not work yet. So why not try to make it work Actually it MUST be possible to make it work somehow, but just pulling the switch to the correct side on the front actually does not work. Thats why I am urgently looking for high res pics of a 3G enabled Acer's internals or at least the D250 service manual.


Edit: As a sweet giveaway by Acer I read in the service manual the AAO has a crisis mode if bios flash went bad (FN+ESC), might be a neat feature as I was thinking of reversing the bios a bit and look for possible expansions on base of InsydeH20. I am pretty sure the current settings menu is stripped down as on most bios anyhow. For anyone who is interested in joining, this effort, drop me a PN here.

Here is a shot of the bluetooth connector as seen once removed the keyboard (green), the other circle shows a jumper/jumperboard (red), can someone with a 3G maybe take me a pic of this red circled? You don't need to disassemble your whole AAO for seeing that, just remove the keyboard.

To do so, pull in the plastic noose above the F8 key (you see the spot and gently lift the keyboard. You need to bend it a bit (gently!!) cause the D250 now has holder on the sides, repalcing the 3 plastic noose previously existing.



Oh and to replace the shitty rapidshare link on my wiki, some new highres pics here (without flash reflection, I tried to avoid as much as I could):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38175080@N ... 808621423/

Click on download fullsize to view them in detail.

 

Sam,

Thanks for your photos and your step-by-step guide on how to take apart the AAO D250. I have a quick question, where exactly is located the Wifi card? Thanks.

 

Sam try blocking out pin 20 on the 3g card so far I can get it to detect my Sierra MC870 by doing this now to get the sim card working!

 

just tried it.... my 881 detected!!!

just waiting for my wifi card to come in and i'll wire up the antenna for the 881 while it's open!

granted... no sim BUT i get gps!

 

what can you do with the extra mini pci-e? i heard that the Acer Aspire One AO751h has 2 pci-e also, one is occupied by the wifi card, the other is free.

 

well, i opened my d250 to add an intel 5100 wifi card and looked at the wifi on-off switch.... and chopped it like the other aao's.... now i can flip my 2nd mini pci-e on and off at will! don't know why off is the default, but i am now happy it works without taping pin 20!

 

I'd love more details on exactly what you did here. For example, could a mini pci-e wifi/bluetooth combo card be added easily to the 2nd slot? Thanks.

 

1. See what I posted for the D150 with regard to Bluetooth and 3G. It should be quite relevant.

2. Also, the Dell 1510 (Broadcom 4321) module is available in half-height form-factor. Make sure they don't send you an Atheros 92xx chipset (Dell 1515) by accident like they did with me. This latter chipset is great in Linux and Windows, but the last time I checked it didn't work with MacOS. That may have changed with 10.5.6 or 10.5.7, but I haven't been able to test it.

 

strange... all of the sudden, my 3g card (sierra wireless 881) is no longer detected in the mini pci-e slot.

it did for about a week and works fine in the usb housing it came in.

 

On the AOA150 the wifi switch can turn off the 3g card.

For some reason it gets switched off sometimes when I reboot.

 

i'm running a d250.... before the switch would turn it on and off.... now nothing... only changes i made were ram and the bios.... could the bios upgrade possibly kill the modem switch if no sim reader in installed??

i was worried that maybe my mini pci-e slot went bad, but taping pin 20 on the card itself allows it to be detected again!

 

Remember reading something about different versions of Bios defeating the 3G slot.

What is the purpose of the Sierra card if you have no sim reader?

GPS ?

 

yup, gps.
reverting to an older bios didn't work either. but like i said... taping pin 20 worked fine.

 

this is NOT a Jumper
it is a filter cap.
and your usb pins
and this will help.
viewtopic.php?f=73&t=15996

 

hi,

i have a aao d250 and bought me a dw1390 to replace the atheros wifi card.. now i notice that i could not use it because the "original one" is a half size card :x
is there a way to use the dw1390 with the additional mini pci-e slot???
i want to use it with mac os x 10.5.8...

if i can use it what have i to do?

best regards..

 

update your bios (1.06 or 1.07, not sure which turns on the mini pci-e) and re-route the cables to the slot....

 

hi ashram,

thank you for your reply...! i updated to bios 1.07.. so i just have to release the cable from the atheros card and plug in to the dw1390? that will do??

how do i reroute the cables? they are too short to connect to the dw1390...

 

if they are too short, then you will have to order some.... ebay tends to be a decent resource, and after that, route them yourself.