bluetooth module other uses

are there any other uses for the bluetooth module slot? im guessing an ssd cant go there. but is there any thing else that can?

 

Dont know if this thing will be useful, but it should work in that slot.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/181059680867?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

No need for a Crystal HD decoder in the M15X. Those were useful back in the days for the first netbooks with low power Atom processors that couldn't handle HD decoding. The M15X will have no issues with HD content even with the weakest setup.

That slot is a USB only mini PCI-E slot. It uses the mini PCI-E form factor but it is wired to the USB bus only so mSATA drives are not going to work.

The best use for that slot is as an extra hidden USB port for a nano mouse receiver using an adapter like this:



Just search for "USB Mini PCI-E adapter." They only cost a couple of dollars.

Been using this for a while now. I upgraded my WLAN card with one that has integrated BT so no need for the dedicated module.

 

nice. thanks i can think f a very important use for that

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-PCI-E-...035251?hash=item3f65debab3:g:vBkAAOSw-W5UwfK7

This one will also fit, and the ports are bootable (like live linux usb), the single ones are not bootable.
You can put 1 BT4.1 dongle and the mouse transmitter

The usb fit inside good.

 

How did you manage to fit those two dongles inside the chassis. Pics please.

 

are any of these mini pcie usb3? ive only seen some and they are WAY to bulky to fit inside the chasis with a thumb drive

 

It will be limited to usb 2.0 speeds anyway. These mini pci-e slots are wired to the USB bus not the PCI Express bus. Only way to get USB 3.0 on the M15X is with an expresscard adapter. Even then, it won't be true USB 3.0, but it will be much faster than 2.0. I'm still curious about how those two USB dongles were fitted inside the M15X chassis.

 

I'll take the pictures tomorrow.. sorry for the delay

 

I'm also curious to see how 2 usb dongles will fit inside the M15X's Bluetooth bay

 

Today i changed the second hdd to ssd and i remembered i never uploaded photos here. the mpcie to double usb (also bootable)
In the upper is adata ud31c memory, which should be the same size of a usb BT dongle

 

Nice work!

 

kosti I beg for your help!
No one knows the answer to this question, this is the only thread that talks about this mini pci-e to usb 3.0 product.

This is the (upside down) motherboard of my Packard Bell Easynote TJ75, on top left you can see my wifi atheros ar5b93 connected through mini pci-e



other side ( https://i.stack.imgur.com/rJxH0.jpg)

If I replace my wifi atheros ar5b93 with the following product that you mentioned in this thread, will I finally have an USB 3.0 on my laptop?

 

That adapter is not USB 3.0, it is USB 2.0; don't let the blue color fool you .

They make USB 3.0 mini pci-e cards but the ones I've seen require using an external cable so that means you will have cables sticking out under your laptop. Also, you will not get USB 3.0 speeds anyway because you will be limited to the speed of the mini pci-e interface which is 2.5Gbps. The best alternative would be an Expresscard USB 3.0 adapter for older laptops (still limited to 2.5Gbps), but your laptop unfortunately does not have an Expresscard slot.

FYI: It looks like your laptop has two mini pci-e slots. There is an extra free slot next to your WLAN slot so there would be no need to remove your wireless card to get another adapter in there. You can always get one of these USB 2.0 mini pci-e adapters and use it for a wireless mouse receiver or something like that. These adapters are cheap enough so might as well make some use of that extra slot.

 

Thank you for your help kosti,

Doh, I didn't see the other mini PCIE, my eyes must have failed after too much googling >_<

I think you mean this https://www.amazon.com/19-Pin-Header-PCI-Express-Female-SD-MPE20142/dp/B009WN7SQA
My problem with this product is that the cable is plugged in a perpendicular position, the worst possibile under the laptop. I need an horizontal plug...
I don't mind a cable under the laptop, I already keep the back raised to help the fan.

That's why I switched my attention to the product posted in this thread, I was fooled by its blue colour and too much hope! Besides it is only found on alibaba and allahu akbar kind of websites.

My problem is that I have to take big backups to an external hard drive regularly and the USB 2 on the sides of the laptop are slow.

Why can't I find a product with an horizontal plug?

I am starting to feel like I am in a hitchcok movie conspiracy, someone doesn't want me to succeed!

Any speed improvement from the regular USB 2 it's all I ask...

 

If your laptop had an expresscard slot or an e-sata port, your problems would have been solved. You could have then just added an expresscard to USB 3.0 card or just used an external e-sata hard drive. Either option would have been significantly faster than USB 2.0.

Also, come to think of it, that USB 3.0 to mini pci-e adapter may not work either. This depends on if the mini pci-e slot itself is wired to the SATA bus. It is likely wired to the USB bus instead which will mean it is limited to USB 2.0 speeds. No matter what adapter you use, your bottleneck will still be USB 2.0 speeds on that mini pci-e slot if it is wired to the USB bus.

I don't think there is much you can do with that laptop. You will probably be stuck with USB 2.0 speeds, unless you are willing to install your external hard drive inside your laptop by removing the optical drive and attaching a hard drive to the optical bay using an adapter. Then you'll get SATA 2 speeds, but it won't be an external drive anymore.

 

Thanks kosti, it is really appreciated.
I think it is clear by now I am a newbie, forgive any stupid question I should make...

This laptop has SATA2 right? Switching from USB2 to SATA2 I would get a speed improvement with both an external 3.5 7200rpm and an external 2.5 5400rpm correct?

I take it there is no way to establish besides buying-and-testing (by looking or by device manager) whether my mini PCIe is wired to the SATA or USB bus?

I have seen an alternative on Amazon, mini PCIe to data SATA but I can't figure the power SATA cable? Maybe I am talking non-sense?

I never thought about the optical drive! What's the name, mini SATA?

The power SATA cable gets me confused on how to do these last 2 very interesting things!

 

We're off-topic but I'll try to help out because there's not much info out there for that model. Yes your laptop has a SATA 2 interface with two internal SATA slots (hard drive and optical drive).

USB 2.0 speeds are theoretically up to 480 megabits per second (or 48 Mega bytes), while SATA 2 has a theoretical bandwidth of 3 Gigabits per second (or 300 Mega bytes) so there will definitely be a speed improvement by moving from USB 2.0 to SATA 2 no matter what hard drive you use because even if the hard drive has a SATA 1 interface (150 Mega bytes per second), it is still theoretically capable of a higher throughput than the USB 2.0 bus offers.

The mini pci-e slot is probably just wired to the USB bus. Here's a translated link from a German site where your laptop is discussed (3rd to last post on page):

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=el&sl=de&tl=en&u=https://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=1142006&page=2

It doesn't state if the slot is wired to the pci-express bus but lots of these slots in older laptops were controlled by the USB bus. I can't find much more info on your laptop but here's a link that may help you to understand the difference between full mini pci-e interfaces and usb only mini pci-e interfaces:

http://electronics.stackexchange.co...format-with-usb-host-interface-what-does-this


If you don't mind removing your optical drive, you can get a hard drive caddy and install a 2nd drive there. That way you will have two hard drives in your laptop. Otherwise, you will be stuck with USB 2.0 speeds with an external drive on that laptop.

http://hddcaddy.com/en/packard-bell-hdd-caddy/684-packard-bell-easynote-tj75-hdd-caddy.html

This adapter is often used by people like me that don't use the optical drive much. I use the original hard drive slot for an SSD where my OS and apps are installed, and I use the optical bay with an adapter like the one in the above link for a 1TB drive for all my data. I of course still have an external drive for backup purposes because it's always best to keep your data on more than one drive in case one fails.

Hope all this helps.

EDIT: It's up to you in the end, but I would honestly not invest much in upgrading that particular laptop.

 

kosti, as far as I am concerned you fully deserve that "notebook deity" title

I wasted too much of my time and of other people's on this mini PCIe thing, I have to get a grip and give up backups on 3.5 HDD.
I will leave a link for future reference though https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L83UJE4/ref=twister_B016QHEZPQ

The caddy solution is cheaper, easier and more secure, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I don't know where to buy from now, that hddcarry.com product is interesting but...
I live in Italy and amazon.it is cheap / easy / quick, the only problem is, will it fit in?
https://www.amazon.it/s/ref=nb_sb_n...url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=ssd+caddy

Another decision to take

 

In the end I bought this one.
https://www.amazon.it/VicTsing-Univ...UTF8&qid=1483827477&sr=8-1&keywords=ssd+caddy

Thanks again.

 

That should work fine. Perhaps you can even remove that plastic bezel and install the bezel from your current optical drive so it looks nicer. Remember to still do external backups on occasion so you have your data on more than one hard drive. Since USB 2.0 speeds are slow, you can always do an initial full backup and then just backup incremental changes to files in the future. A good free program that I use myself is Free File Sync.

http://www.freefilesync.org/

Glad you found a solution.

EDIT: That mini pci-e adapter you linked may work in your wlan slot if that connector is wired to the pci express bus (and not just a usb-only mini pci-e), but it would not fit in your laptop anyway because it is a full size mini pci-e card and your laptop only supports half-height cards. The cheaper mini pci-e to usb 2.0 adapters we were talking about initially are able to fit in half-height slots by breaking off the perforated part of the pcb board.

 

I am sorry but it's interesting!
If you ignore me it's OK really

I see plenty of space and a screw hole in the distance for a long one
In the following picture the wifi card is in its original connector


Bigger picture here
http://i.imgur.com/mSXwiBN.jpg

There must be a way to tell if it's USB or not!
I did a probably useless experiment with hwinfo (you judge)

This is a screenshot from hwinfo before doing anything
You can see my atheros wifi card on PCI Express Root Port #2



I turned off the computer, moved the atheros wifi card on the free connector, turned back on
It auto installed drivers etc. and wifi started to work again.

This is a screenshot from hwinfo after
The only thing that changed is
PCI Express Root Port #2 disappeared
PCI Express Root Port #3 appeared
the rest of the info on the right is the same

 

Interesting; it may just be a full PCI-Express x1 slot, and you're right, it looks like that slot will accept a full height card. It is listed as a PCI Express version 1.1 slot at x1 bandwidth, so if that card works, it will be running at PCI-Express 1.0 speeds (not 2.0) which is about 250 Mega bytes per second. That means it should be around as fast as an e-sata slot which is still much faster than USB 2.0. You may want to give that card a try. It's not cheap though and it may be tricky trying to fit a USB cable in that slot since there's not much room in there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_1.1

 

I wish I had never come across this mini PCIe thing, it's confusing and there are people saying different things out there...

I have come across this now
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-...&qid=1483894493&sr=8-2&keywords=mini+pcie+ssd
I mounted on this laptop the same SSD 250GB but 2.5 and it's sold at the same price How is this even possible?

Later I read this
"The connector may look like a Mini-PCIe connector, but electrically it's SATA, and mSATA drives only work if the Mini-PCIe slot has a direct connection to a SATA controller."

I can't use it? I feel stupid... and contagious...

 

That's an msata card. Won't work in your laptop. Forget it

Again, your laptop is quite old, so don't invest too much in it at this point. That hdd tray for a 2nd internal hard drive is a good, cheap investment but I wouldn't do much more than that; instead save up for something newer like a used M15X .

 

You are right of course but look at what triturbo says on this very forum
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/what’s-the-difference-between-mpcie-and-msata.797258
It sounds like you can turn one into the other.

I am actually starting to enjoy the chaos there is between mini PCIe and mSATA on google, amazon or ebay... try to type "mini pcie ssd" you will get all sort of results like "mini PCIe mSATA SSD" or "mSATA MINI PCI-E Solid State Drive"

I have read someone say they share the same physical specifications and connectors to make life easier to the customer!
ahahahaha that guy must have been on drugs!

 

I can't even get the caddy to work, if you want to give a look, here it is
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...er-adding-caddy-cant-even-access-bios.800229/

 

Solution here http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...date-make-caddy-work-manual-overclock.800264/