AOA110 AOA150 zg5, sata ssd AHCI, bcm70012 and usb wifi PCI-e trail and error

Discussion in 'Acer Aspire One' started by tbird6352, Mar 22, 2014.

  1. tbird6352

    tbird6352

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    Learn from my mistakes and successes. Others pioneered this, so my thanks to them. I thought I'd put all my info I found in one place. What I've found so far...
    1. Original upgrade was PATA 32gb "drop in" ssd. Performance was better but still crappy. Doubled the speed but still weak. (original Linux reinstalled)
    2. Added 1gb more memory to 1.5 total. Helped more than anything else. Should have been step 1.
    3. Decided Xp would run well on this. It ran much better . Installed a usb tv tuner. But TV playback with a Hauppauge 950Q was crappy at best.
    4. Battery life weak. Upgraded to a much larger battery from EBay. Good investment.
    5/ Atheros wifi module as an upgrade. No difference. Pulled it.
    6. Here's where it gets interesting. I installed a SATA connector off a bigger Acer but did not support it properly. Do it right. See 7.
    7a. I also managed to trim the case so a stock 2.5 laptop drive fit in nicely. If you do this , silicone the drive in place. The added weight of the drive broke the SATA off the board. Did a repair and glued it in more permanently.
    7b. Installed windows 7 pro. This was also a worthwhile upgrade. Made watching tv with the 950Q usable. Backed up entire drive just in case.
    8. Decided to play with accelerated video and decided a second pci-e slot would be a good addition. Can of worms, but once understood, works out fine. It was easier to just find a AOA150 board with the second slot on it for a 3g card and swap the board. While in there, I cut the switch slider to allow the wifi switch to operate in both directions. (no "pin 20 mod" needed)
    9. I took another crack at an SSD. Being cheap, I put in the cheapest drive from a major manufacturer I could find in case the speed increase wasn;t worth it. It turned out to be a ReadyCache 32gb from SanDisk. Paid $45 . But to get ssd trim enabled to optimize the drive, I installed the hacked BIOS found elsewhere that enabled hidden menus such as AHCI mode. AHCI enables trim. Microsoft FixIt 50470 (kb922976) allows enabling AHCI on an already installed win 7 so it doesn't "blue-screen" on reboot. Made a HUGE increase in speed. Also worth it.
    10. Here's where it gets interesting. I researched this, and found the lower PCI-e is USB only. So I did some more research and found a half height PCI-e realtek RTL8191SU on the PCI-e USB bus. It has a usb controller built in. I put it in the lower slot with an adapter, instantly recognized. Sliding the switch to the *left* now turns the Realtek WiFi on and off. Installed the Broadcom BCM70012 in the upper slot, installed their newest drivers, and had instant accelerated video in win 7, even in Windows media player. Also works well with MPC . Battery life is shorter, but ok.

    NOTE: FLash does not work accelerated. Support apparently dropped after version 10.2
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2014
    tbird6352, Mar 22, 2014
    #1
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