Got me an Acer TravelMate C110

[Paisley Pirate]

Hi,

Just bragging up my new (to me) Acer TravelMate C110 tablet PC... I found it on Ebay a while back, and have been nursing it back to health.

Since I have my trusty little netbook (A150) which turns 3 next month (has it really been that long?) I thought I'd give this older tablet a try since I LOVE touchscreens (I am typing this on my HP TouchSmart) and like the tablet configuration, AND I have been very impressed with the durability of the Acer, since my A150 is still running strong and the battery still holds 4-5 hours battery life after all this time!

I did have to add a bunch of ram in to it (and had to tear into it to add some of it, kind of like the A150 in that regard) and am having a driver/hardware issue with the wireless card in it... Intel didn't support the upgrade to XP SP3 (let alone Windows 7) very well, so the hardware/driver combination is known to cause BSOD's. Fortunately, it appears to be only at startup and only occasional right now... but I still went ahead and ordered a new wireless card from another manufacturer for it, and will see if that cures it.

Other things to consider: the hinges are tight, but the latch is not. So, I have a new latch ordered for it, and will install it when it gets here. The case is a little more frail than the netbooks, but I have stiffened it in a couple of places with some epoxy. The heat gunk was dried out on the CPU and GPU, so I recoated with Arctic Silver.

My largest gripe though, was the inability to reinstall from the (supplied) recovery disks... it would not allow me to do so... so I had to find a copy of XP Tablet and wipe and reinstall...

All in all a pretty good little machine... and now thinking ahead to getting one of the new Acer tablet PC's (not the android stuff, windows for me, so I can get on to my company's cloud...)

 

[Paisley Pirate]

New wireless N card fixed the BSOD problem.

But another question. I have the external DVD drive with it (an Acer/AOpen ESV-189i PRO) that came with no power supply. It is marked with dc 5v in, but what is the correct polarity for it??? I can't seem to find that anywhere, and I don't want to blow it up just plugging in and hoping for the best... any ideas on how to find out? I looked at the users manual for it (actually the U version, which is USB instead of Firewire) but no go on that...

Best hope is someone who has one can just look and tell me. Thanks in advance.

 

[Swarvey]

MY 1,000th POST!!!!!

I have a USB DVD-RW drive here that has both the mini-USB connection, and the 5volt DC connection. Mine didnt' come with the DC adapter though. I use it with a dual-USB-A to mini-USB connector. This lead uses two USB ports on the netbook (one for data+power, one just for power), the other end runs into the USB drive. This provides the extra current required to operate the device and negates the need for a DC adapter.

Otherwise, typical rule of thumb is that the earth (negative) terminal is the larger terminal, that would be the outer cylinder of the adapter, the pin in the centre is usually the positive side.

I'll crack my USB-DVDRW enclosure open later to verify and post back.

 

[Paisley Pirate]

Cracked mine open to look at it... and, of course, it is Completely covered up by metal shielding... makes it terribly difficult to tell. It would be my luck that it would be backwards.

thanks a lot for the input.

 

[Paisley Pirate]

To be clear (in case anyone else ever wonders)

Yes, the outer part on the 5v connector is the ground (-) and the positive (+) is in the center.

I got a power supply for it and it works great.


Now if the replacement battery I got would just take a full charge... down to less than half available in only a month... argh.