Pimp My 3680

The Acer Aspire 3680 is one of the fun candidates for upgrading, because it's so easy to disassemble, inexpensive to obtain, started out at such a low point, and (usually) has a pretty high upgrade potential.

Of course, upgrading the CPU is a lot of fun, since going from a Core based Celeron M (4x0) to either a Core 2 based Celeron M (5x0) or a full-fledged Core 2 Duo results in huge performance gain. The first upgrade I recommend is RAM, the second is hard drive, and third is CPU, but what do you do after that? There are of course simple modular upgrades, like changing the optical drive or switching to the extended 6600 mAh battery.

If you don't have the optional BlueTooth or WebCam, then of course you can add those. With the original BlueTooth module being hard to find, there's a great guide for adding an aftermarket USB BlueTooth dongle using the module's connector. This is nice, because it doesn't take up any of your existing USB ports, and it stays completely inside the case.

I've been buying broken Acer Aspire 3680 laptops in various conditions, stripping them apart, and rebuilding them to sell for profit. Some mods have been to make them sell, such as paint or upgraded specifications. Other mods have been to simply make them better laptops, even if it won't increase the retail value by as much as the investment, such as GPS or Digital TV Tuner.

The BlueTooth connector and the WebCam connector are both actually modified USB ports. To use them for generic USB devices, you need to steal power from somewhere else, preferably a USB port so that you know you have the right voltage and a sufficient power rail. With this in mind, the WebCam connector is ideal for a single, small USB device with very little modification. I like to sneak a USB flash drive under the power board. The BlueTooth port allows a nice amount of space, and if you're planning on going all out, your first mod might be to install a USB hub.

Sound is disappointing on a 3680. But since they designed the chassis and motherboard around a theoretical upgraded video card that never existed, there's a nice place to add speakers. I like to keep my mods as subtle as possible, but sometimes I make perimeters on the bottom of laptops using weatherstrip, so that the bottom of the laptop created an isobaric chamber when placed on a flat surface like a table or desk.

Sanding and painting the surfaces is a painstaking, rewarding, and enjoyable process.

Some of the really fun toys are GPS, Mobile Broadband, and Digital TV Receiver, which can all be hidden inside the chassis.

My goal with this thread is to offer tips and tricks, hopefully pictures, and answer questions related to some of the more involved hardware mods.

Another goal with this thread is to help me keep from hijacking other threads. (-: I'm going to try to pace myself and update sections at a time.

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Using WebCam jack for internal USB Flash Drive (or any other general purpose USB):

The WebCam jack, which can be found on the power board over the lid switch, is a somewhat modified USB port. If you do not have nor want a WebCam, then this is a great place to sneak in an internal USB flash drive. The jack pinout is as follows: VCC, Signal+, Signal-, GND. That means that the signal pins are reversed from the traditional USB connector. One problem is that the VCC is only about 3.3v, so many USB devices will refuse to work, as was the case with the 16GB Kingston flash drive I used. The solution to this is simple, but it does require soldering on the power board. Simply steal your power from one of the rear USB ports.

http://www.freeartfoundation.org/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=358 -- View from bottom of power board.
http://www.freeartfoundation.org/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=357 -- View from top of power board.

Sorry that these images are so blurry. /-: If anything needs to be clarified, let me know.

Why would someone want an internal flash drive? Well, the BIOS will happily boot from such a device, so you could use it instead of a hard drive, which would save you power and weight and would reduce heat. Flash devices are not so good for writing to a lot, but they're great for reading from. So instead, I recommend a few alternative configurations:

1) Use a ReadyBoost compliant flash drive, and use it to speed up Vista's access to the hard drive.
2) Install Windows on the hard drive and Linux on the flash drive, then have Linux symlink the /home, /tmp, and swap to folders on the Windows partition. (I don't recommend letting Linux use your Windows swap file, since it's also often used as a hibernation file.) Your frequently written data will be on the hard drive, while your frequently read data will be on the flash drive. Plus, your personal files will be accessible under both Windows and Linux.
3) Make a recovery partition on the USB drive, or store your drivers there for convenient access.

Using the simple Kingston 16GB drive, I get a little less than 30MB/sec sustained transfers. It's nice to have instant access times, as opposed to the delayed access times of a hard drive, but overall it's not really very fast compared to a modern SATA hard drive. The theoretical maximum speed for a USB device is 480Mbit/sec, which comes out to 60MB/sec. Having said that, if you really need lots of speed, you might be happier with an expensive SSD. But what I noticed is that with the 4000 mAh battery I got over four hours of browsing and playing games, and the hard drive almost never needed to spin up. I'm very interested in trying this with a 60MB/sec flash drive, or even with an extra one on the BlueTooth connector, so that I can RAID-0 them together for 120MB/sec read speeds.

Note: When reassembling, be sure to check that the wires don't get in the way of the power switch or power LED. That little power switch is about as strong as a toothpick, and one bad angle can break it off.

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Adding Speakers to the Bottom of the Laptop:

The main article can be found here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=366452

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Painting and Refinishing the Chassis:

I love these 3680's. I think they're ugly, have pathetic sound, and have almost nothing to protect the screens from being smashed...but, I still love these 3680's! I've refinished a number of them with gloss black, so that all of the silver junk is replaced with gloss black except for the front oval piece that the speakers, jacks, switches, and lights go through. Honestly, I didn't paint it the first time I tried this, because it looked like a real pain in the neck. However, when I reassembled the first one, I liked the way that oval piece looked so much that I have been doing it the same way ever since.

Spray enamel is really strong stuff, when it's completely cured. Unfortunately, this might take two or three months! It will dry to the touch in a day or two, and you can reassemble it and use it pretty early on if you're careful, but if you want a finish you'll be really happy with, then I suggest touching the painted surfaces as little as possible during the first couple weeks. The touchpad buttons and the wrist-rests are places that would receive a lot of contact during regular use, so be particularly careful of these. Consider even just using an external keyboard and mouse for a while. The lid latches can also scratch some of the paint off of the latch strikers, the lid switch might possibly scratch the bezel if the paint is very fresh, and the rubber bumpers can leave impressions as well. A good idea would be to simply keep the laptop open and use an external keyboard and mouse for a couple weeks.

Disassembly is more involved with a paint job than any other operation you can do to this laptop. It's a lot of work! You will need to disassemble the screen, remove the wireless antennae, remove the left metal brace from the base of the laptop, remove the S-Video cover, remove the light redirectors for the LED's next to the escape key, mask off the glossy plastic, disassemble the touchpad and touchpad buttons, remove the lid latch, and very carefully remove any logos or labels you wish to put back on later. A mistake will make you mad, and I don't want you to curse at me. (-:

Regarding the logos and stuff, I usually like to remove the "acer" and "Aspire 3680" labels from the bezel and the "acer" logo from the lid, patch them up with automotive putty, and make it look like they never even existed. I also like to remove the long rubber bumpers from the sides, because it's my opinion that they actually make it easier to break the LCD by placing something on top of the laptop. If you decide to do this, you will want to patch, sand, then glaze and sand. This will make the project a little tricky, because paint doesn't stick to glaze the same as it sticks to plastic, so there will be a visible difference between the places you patched and the rest of the plastic. You could use primer on the whole thing, but my luck with primer on these laptops has been poor, because I have usually used gloss black paint, and when you accidentally scratch the paint off, instead of finding the original black plastic underneath, you find bright gray primer.

Update: It's much easier to remove the metal "acer" logo off of the lid if you drip some rubbing alcohol on it and let it soak. If you gently pry up a little on the edges, that will help the alcohol get in faster. The mounting tape that either Quanta or Acer used dissolves nicely in alcohol.

What I usually do is apply 8 - 12 very light layers of spray enamel without using primer. Then, after a couple days of drying, I gently wet-sand it again, which makes a unified polished layer and removes any bubbles, fuzzies, or stupid drugged-out insects. After wet-sanding, I polish it with rubbing compound, and the places I patched look just like the rest of it.

Okay, so here's what you need: (Almost all of this can be found at an automotive supply store, but I recommend using basic, cheap spray cans of enamel instead of the specialty "engine" or "plastic" enamel, which tend to be very thick and not as hard.)

320, 600/800, 1000, and 2000 grit waterproof "wet-or-dry" sand paper
Rubbing Compound
Masking Tape
Super Glue
Putty (like Bondo)
Spot Glaze
About four or five cans of spray enamel
Great lighting, ventilation, and temperature. (Read the spray can!)
Steady trickle of cold water
Hair Dryer

Disassemble the laptop, and be sure to keep all of the tiny screws, light plastic pieces, sticky mesh, and other stuff. You'll be amazed just how important it is to put those pieces back. For instance, if you forget to put the metal sticker back on the backside of the touchpad, then regular everyday use can produce enough static electricity that you can zap and fry your motherboard! I recommend using some of that masking tape to tape the tiny pieces somewhere close to where they came from, and if you need to, take some pictures so that you know how everything goes back together.

For the pieces that are attached with melted plastic, such as the edges of the touchpad buttons, use a very small, flathead screwdriver and gently pry upwards. You'll probably get most of the pieces separated cleanly so that you can simply slip them back in place, but if some break off, don't worry, because you'll need to super-glue them back anyway. I find that it's totally unnecessary to remove the black glossy strip of plastic along the right side of the keyboard, and it's also really annoying to try to put it back if it has been removed. I removed it on one laptop, and I kind of liked the way it looked without it, but it's up to your personal preference.

Whether you plan to keep your logos and stickers or not, you will need to remove them. Use the hair dryer to heat up the adhesives that hold stickers on, and very gently flex the plastic so that you can get a fingernail or plastic butter knife underneath to pry it up. This requires some finesse if you want to save them, particularly the "acer" logo on the lid, since it's a hard piece of metal held in place with some nasty mounting tape. That piece likes to bend, and it doesn't bend back.

Start by wet-sanding the front edges of the lid with 320 grit until the silver is completely removed, and then gradually work your way in towards the top-middle. I don't like to use a sanding block, and I definitely don't like using a power sander. I just use my three middle fingers to hold the paper down while I hold a couple edges between my first two and last two fingers. Once you have completely removed all of the silver, which will probably leave your arm sore, wash the surface clean, and switch to a finer grit. You probably won't need to sand very much with each finer grit, but pay close attention to the rounded edges, because they tend to stay a little bit rough while the flat lid gets smoothest.

After you have finished sanding at 2000 grit, washed, and completely dried your lid, then you will probably even be able to see a faint but clear reflection if you hold the lid at a sharp angle. It's matte plastic, but with a good polish you'll see a very faint mirror-like reflection when looking across horizontally.

The bezel will be a little bit annoying to sand, because you'll have to sand the raised edges off of the long ovals where the long rubber bumpers and the "Aspire 3680" logo were (if you chose to remove it.) Unfortunately, the plastic inside those ovals is far smoother than the rest of the bezel, so to achieve a uniform, very smooth surface you're going to have to sand quite a lot with 320 grit. Be careful of the lid switch button at the bottom-right, because it needs to retain its shape and size in order to properly work with the lid switch. Don't sand it.

I generally don't sand the hinge-cover section at all, because it's such a small painted section, and it's very easy to accidentally sand the glossy part in the middle. I usually just mask off the glossy parts so that only the hinge covers and the silver and matte black parts close to the keyboard get painted.

The main top-section of the base (the large piece of plastic that includes the wrist rests) usually gets sanded for three reasons: Uniformity with the lid, removal of and scratches and nics, and removal of that silver color that might show up if you scratch the paint in the future. While sanding, be careful of the glossy strip to the right of the keyboard.

As for the touchpad buttons, I wish I could sand them, but I really don't know what to do here, because they're tiny, and the middle button has little things that would be removed if it's sanded. Maybe it would look nicer if they're removed? I really don't know. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Mask off all sections that you won't be painting. Even if it doesn't matter if it gets paint on it, it's still a good idea to keep it free of paint so that you don't accidentally transfer wet paint to a place it shouldn't be. I like to mask the area where the keyboard usually is, then use some tape to hold the touchpad buttons on it there. That way, when applying long smooth spray-strokes across that section, I also even apply the same coat on the touchpad buttons.

Apply many thin layers of paint. (Remember, read the spray can. Even the spray can recommends practicing on something first.) I usually put 8 - 12 layers on, turning the plastics 90 degrees each time so that I get all the little grooves and edges from all angles. (Put a layer on the lid, then the bezel, then the hinge cover section, then the wrist-rest section, then return to the lid so that there will be a few minutes between layers. Don't put all 8 - 12 layers on at once. Then it won't cure and harden.) I usually pay special attention to the lid, applying more layers to it than to anything else, because I usually only wet-sand the lid. Wet sanding will eliminate that orange-peel effect and any little imperfections, but it will also make the paint thinner, so if it's too thin to begin with, then you'll sand right through the paint and you'll have to wait a week and paint it again.....

Most spray enamels say you can wet-sand in 24 hours, but since there are some sharp corners on these things I recommend waiting several days. Caution: If you even very lightly sand an angle, you will very quickly sand off most or all of the paint. Stick to just flat or mostly-flat surfaces, and only just slightly sand the rounded edges. The spray can and/or sandpaper will tell you to wet-sand with 1000 and then 2000 grit, but I strongly recommend starting with 2000 directly and sanding only until the orange-peel is gone. You will be very upset if you oversand. )-:

After that, completely wash and dry the surface. Then, swirl on the rubbing compound. Basically you want to follow the directions on the bottle, but be warned: Using rubbing compound is the same as sanding with a super-fine sandpaper. You can easily over-polish and remove the paint from sharp corners. Also, I find it's easier and cleaner to use Bounty paper towels instead of a terry cloth. (Bounty seems to be just strong enough, and it's easier to just throw out pieces of paper towel instead of trying to clean the terry cloth. These laptop pieces are much smaller than car body panels, so you want to be very careful with them.)

(I've got to run, but I'll try to return later and finish. I have some pictures to upload, too. Does anyone know if there's a post-size limit?)

I have a picture after using rubbing compound, before using any clear coat or turtle wax.

http://www.freeartfoundation.org/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=359

Here's a finished picture, also.

http://www.freeartfoundation.org/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=360

Got another one, which shows a poorly patched-over Acer lid logo.

http://www.freeartfoundation.org/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=361

I don't have a picture of it, but I had deep scratches in one, and it looked like it was dragged across the sidewalk. In fact, it was simply placed upside-down on a paper towel in order to install a hard drive, and then it was slid a little bit when it was flipped back over. Unfortunately, I had only painted it less than two days before, and it was very delicate. But fortunately, I simply re-used rubbing compound, and the scratches completely vanished!

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What's next?

I'm waiting on a big order of BlueTooth dongles, but while I do that, I'm planning to add USB hubs, GPS, Mobile Broadband, Digital TV with antenna in the screen as well as coax through the back, audio amplifier with low-pass filter for single strong subwoofer, and maybe a second USB Flash device to be used in a symmetrical RAID-0 with the one on the webcam port. I'll have to experiment with that and see how performance looks.

 

Those arguments sounds fishy at my ears .

There is no hijacking of other threads .
There is no isolated offering of tips and tricks .
There is no .... bla bla bla I am mods expert .. I will post pictures later .

The main forum values are the "team work", and the free offering of help.

All the above sounds like pure advertising, and possibly some one with better English , he could understand better , if i got mislead ed or not .

 

I'm sorry if it was misleading. The one thing I was trying to avoid was sounding like an advertisement. I don't want to come across as self-serving.

I found tons of great help on this server when it came to upgrading the CPU's in my 3680's. I found some good, though incomplete, help with the pinout of the BlueTooth connector. I found practically nothing documented about the WebCam connector, and in trying to figure it out myself accidentally burned a couple things up. The forum users here have helped me a lot, and there's good information to be found for those willing to search and scour, but I didn't find any complete central per-model information. So, we'll just see how it goes. (-: As for offering teamwork and free help, I will try my best.

But thank you for keeping me busy. I have a bad habit of starting projects and then never completing them. If I get lazy and don't post content, then all I'm doing is littering. I will try to put up some images today.

 

He has been posting some very good sound/paint mods he has done on the Upgraded Acer 3680 Celeron CPU to a T5300! thread for a while now and has created this thread to dedicate it to modding the 3680 and leaving to other thread for CPUs. Hence the hijacking statement.

As a reseller he might have to read/comply with the retailer rules but I have no idea of those things but I am really looking forward to this thread and getting down and dirty with my 3680.

 

Hmm, I know this may seem off-topic and hard to prove, but I'm Jewish Christian, and it's Saturday morning here. I expect I'll probably be posting here a lot on sabbath, since it's the only free time I get. It would be very, very wrong if I tried to sell stuff here during the sabbath.

I've got a couple pics, so I'm going to Gimp them and put them online in a little bit.

 

The pics woulod be good, as it'll help people see what they are doing!!!

 

you can prove it, but i think you would be banned for posting pic's like that


just a thought
Phil

 

HAHAHA, well, that's true. I think everyone would be happy enough just to take my word for it. ;-p

 

Darn it, what I should have said is, "If I did post pics to prove that, then it would be obvious why I want to Gimp the pics before posting." ;-D

(oops, I did it again. I multiposted in a thread I started myself. Sorry)