Acer aspire 7720 in 2020 thread!

So, I recently fired up my old chunk of laptop. Installed the latest version of 10 on it and everything is working great. I also recently found my old mini dv camera. Again, firing it up I noticed I could only transfer videos from it to a computer using firewire.

Low and behold, the good Ole 7720 has firewire. I did my first transfer yesterday and it worked perfectly. I have to get my workflow running a bit better, but it works and is dandy. I am wondering about resolve and upscaling the videos to hd. I have to check it out. I think that would overwhelm my acer, and I'm going to use my dell for upscaling. I may try it on the acer just to see though.

Now I have to add the drives to it for storage.

 

Last november my 7720G died. Better, my 7720G VGA card died after years of orrible tortures (hot & cold, hotter and cold, and so on).got
I decided to not fix it and buy a new laptop (got a used Fujitsu Lifebook E754 in perfect conditions but with HD ready screen and no cam, no good in these days...).
Last month, after several sessions of conf calls without cam or forced to use phone, I checked for a spare VGA card in Aliexpress and found a 9600M for few bucks.
I got it, installed et voilà, system up & running.
I still prefer to use this (I could use another 14", newer Fujitsu E746 with FHD display and a more powerful i7 cpu) because of the display quality and of the very good responsiveness of the keyboard.
But the system is a quite bit old and performance are suffering for low RAM and CPU.
The first one will not be upgraded, but I'm looking for a nice, cheap substitute of the present T8100.
I also will swap the wifi network card with a new one with integrated BT, given that built-in BT module it's not working neither can be activated (dunno why???).

Pay attention to SATA2 interface. It will limit in a negative way the performance of a SSD drive, so don't waste money in very fast devices. Normal one will be fast enough...

 

Hi!
Just an information about PCI-E slots.
The above is a picture of 7720G mainboard on the cpu socket side.
There are two slots, indicated by arrows, the should be two mini pci-e slots.
The red arrow hilights the WiFi card, the yellow one a free slot that, according to the service manual, should accomodate a minicard tv-tuner.

Now the question is: could be the JP19 slot (that with yellow arrow), at the moment empty, used for other different modules such as a faster flash disk or a 3G/4G card?
Thank you all in advance.

 

I am adding the ssd in sata2 for energy savings more than anything.

 

Just installed 20H2, it works great, the notebook is fast and snappy. 14 year old device still humming along with no issues.

 

I have it's smaller sibling, the 5720G. Also runs sweet, and mine sports a HD4650 (albeit the 1GB DDR2 version, OEM'd by Acer).
Haven't tried installing 20H2 yet (not sure if the HDD is up to it - a Seagate Pipeline Mini 250GB) but I have instead settled for now w/ Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64.

Have replaced the original screen + LVDS with a 7520G/7720G LVDS cable (as the 7520/7720 have a fully wired/dual-link cable, while 5520/5720 have a single link) as well as the display has been changed from the original 1280x800 AuO B154EW02 to a Chungwa CLAA154WP05A 1440x900 LCD (as I didn't see the reason to drop a 1680x1050 panel - I do have one running in a souped up HP DV6723ea).

It's been part of a few of my personal restoration projects during the strange kind of lockdown that's been rolling for some weeks now - here's I've restored these so far:

- Aspire 6920G - 834G32Bn
- Pavillion DV9658ea
- Pavilion DV6723ea
- Aspire 8930G - 643G25Mn
- Aspire 5520G
- Aspire 5738ZG
- Aspire 5920G
- Pavilion DV7-3165el
- Aspire 6930G

I also plan on restoring a DV5-1131en. T3400, GF 9200M GS, no HDD, no RAM. Should be fun and hopefully much cooler once I clean and upgrade it.

 

HP dv5? I had the 7. great looking machine but mine had motherboard problems.

 

Yeah, I ain't touching the AMD versions, not even with a 10ft pole lol. Had 4 1st gen DV7s with bad boards. Swapped one of them for a 3rd generation (3100 series) DV7-3165EL, and that one was pretty sweet. Shame the battery is dead and it still runs hot, but that's AMD for you.

Same goes for the DV5s. This one is the third I have been through, after the other two Turion based DV5s didn't come back after reflowing the IGP. The 9200M GS+T3200 I got is actually reliable - doesn't heat up horribly (not even after upgrading to a P8400!) and also is pretty silent. Same issue with the battery almost - it still has a bit of charge left but it's at a ridiculously low 3-5 minutes lol. I might send it for recelling (I don't have the tools to reprogram the BMS, and they do capacity upgrades) since it's a nice machine. That, or I'll just order a extended battery.

Also just for fun I might track down a AMD based DV7 from the 1000 series, and have a shot at reflowing it again. I just don't stop until I get one working lmao.

 

I sent my dv7 back 3 times to get the mobo replaced. Each time taking over 2 months. I had to buy my acer to be able to work reliably. The store took the dv on trade when it came back from the 3rd mobo replacement. My acer has been 100 percent reliable since then. Even the original battery is still working to around 2 to 3 hrs of usage.

 

Yes, I agree with you because I have been using Acer laptops more than 10 years and they haven't let me down at all.

 

My last three have been stone cold reliable too. My 4810T was awesome. It was the Canadian Olympic special edition and got 10 hrs battery life no matter what I was doing with it, with an awesome screen, speed and build. My 7720, all you need to know has been posted about it, and my S3 my 14 year old son uses is awesome too. My 22 year old son had an acer (can't remember the model) but it was a cheapy from walmart. At 16 years old he dropped it down a full flight of hardwood stairs in our previous home, and it lost the space bar and another button and that was it. No cracks, scrapes nothing. Just took it all. If that was his macbook air it would have been game over.

 

All of my Acers are tough as nails too. 5738ZG, 6920G, 6930G, 8930G, 5520G, 5720G, 5750G, 5920G, 7738G, all are running perfect.

My HPs aren't bad either - nx7300, DV6723el, DV9658ea, Compaq 6735s, CQ57-460EA, DV5-1131EN, DV7-3165EL,G6-1250SS all up and running without hitches. A DV7-1214ea might also join soon, assuming I can get it running after a reflow. (has bluray drive btw)

 

Speaking of acer, I need to do updates on my son's S3. That computer is better than my other sons macbook air...at 1/3 of the cost.

 

Finally joining in the 7720G club, with a 7720G-6A2G25Mi in a pretty stock state:

Core 2 Duo T5750
Geforce 9300M G (rebranded 8400M but with newer G9x series underfill - chip model is G86-635-A2) 256MB vRAM
3GB of DDR2
stock and pretty yellowed 1440x900 screen (I know the LVDS itself is made for even up to 1920x1200 - even HP's DV9000s are made that way IIRC)
some LENOGE 5200mAh "replacement" battery that surprisingly holds up pretty well despite not being charged in a good while
Intel 3945ABG WLAN

Came with no HDDs and no charger. I've successfully managed to mod an ASUS charger (in reality I just moved one of middle pins inside the DC jack enough to make contact with the Acer's plug) and added two spare drives I had (500GB Samsung/Seagate ST500LM012 + Seagate 320GB, both were from HPs), as well as repasted both CPU and GPU with MX4 (I had originally bought it for an RoG G73JH that needs repairing to the GPU and a ASUS X54HR that just needed new paste as the old one was rock solid) and so far it's been running nice, typing this post from it at the moment.

Upgrades to do:

- hopefully fit a better CPU in place of that T5750
- replace the 320GB with a SSD
- replace the actual LCD with a 1920x1200 screen
- hopefully source a AS07B32 genuine battery so I can replace that suspicious at best LENOGE battery (trust me, it looks absurdly sketchy though it feels heavy enough)
- replace the GPU with a 9600M GS or GT, whichever I can source in my country for cheap
- replace both 667MHz sticks with 2x2GB 800MHz
- maybe even stick a X9000 in? Dunno if the board supports it though.

 

those dont go together, unless you can either modify socket. I believe the best cpu that can go with it might be T7600G, which is an unlocked CPU and can be overclocked through throttlestop software.

other than that, maybe try fsb overclocking? it's so old I can't recall anything anymore

 

Thing is that X9000 should actually be supported. It's not 1066FSB, but 800FSB, which as far as I recall should work on the PM965, and at least two users over at CPU-upgrade (which was made by CPU-world I think) reported the X9000 working on a Fujitsu E8410 and a Sony Vaio FZ21M, so it's not as much of a chipset issue than it would be a BIOS microcode support issue.

 

that is pretty good if it's really the case. but obtaining a bios at this point for such an old machine, unless you know someone has the capability to do such a thing it'll be impossible at this point. it will be pretty nice to see some of these old power machine support newer hardware. would x9000 also work in Dell xps m2010 then? the CPU that came with it was T7600 generation.

 

I have found most of the modded BIOSes that were done for the 5920, 6920 and 6930 relatively easy, so 7720 shouldn't be much of an issue. Just need to find one that is has a small degree of foolproofness, flash it accordingly, and then go to town with the upgrades. For example, my 5720G came with some strange FSC branded Go7600 MXM, 2x512MB RAM, and no HDD. Now it has a modded BIOS from here, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, 1440x900 panel from an ASUS + 7520G LVDS cable and the cherry from the top of the cake, an Acer OEM HD4650 1GB MXM which runs flawlessly.

The XPSM2010 sadly won't accept it because it runs on the 945PM chipset, not the newer PM965 chipset that the Fujitsu, Vaio and my Acer have.

 

thats a bummer, x9000 is much superior to T7600G

 

Have finally upgraded my 7720G, as follows:

- Core 2 Duo T9300
- Geforce 9500M GS 512MB
- 2x 500GB HDDs (will probably search for some cheap SSDs though)
- TSSTCorp DVD-RW
- 1920x1200 screen
- 2x2GB DDR2-800
- currently Windows 7 but I might go 10.

Could have also dropped a black keyboard from a defunct 6530G I had but I felt like sticking with the original white one, seeing as it is in pretty good shape.

 

Anyone interesetd in my 7720 if I put it up on the classifieds? gauging interest before I do so. Its all ready to go. clean install fo windows 10.