XPS 15 R2 (L502X) Internal USB how to and proof

Thanks for the quick reply. I have L502X laptop which comes with Quanta integrated webcam. Where can I get the pin-outs for testing the camera ?

 

mmm, do you have a multimeter?

if you test two pins with the multimeter you can get the 5+ volts and the gnd pin.

once you have that, there only will be two posible combinations of the two other pins.

usb- and usb+ (also know as data- and data+)

once you found the 5v and gnd pins, remove the camera and usb cable and put it over the desk, then attach a usb connector by soldering.

you can use any usb cable from a broken device, just cut it, and solder it to the camera

since it isnt a sensitive device like a usb hdd or stick with writable data, it doesnt matter if you make a mistake on data+ and data- wires, if it doesnt work, all you have to do is switch the data wires and try again.

the most dangerous pins are the the voltage ones, for example putting the 5v one into the gnd one and vicversa, or plugging the 5v one into a data wire, that can damage the device.

but since you got the power wires with the ultimeter, it should matter.

you can also check the color wires from the usb camera usb cables.

they may be the same as usb colors used at the first post, I used the same colors on my mod

red 5v
white data -
green data +
black GND

 

oh, just forgot to post something here

I may found another unused usb port data + and data - pins on the motherboard









basically the two pins from the top, anyway acording to the datasheet, they may require a resistor in order to work properly.

if anyone is going to take appart the machine to make an usb internel mod and doesnt want to mess with the minipcie ports, this can be an alternative.

this is untested, but may works ^^

 

well i always was looking for something like this though, i was looking for an caddy for 1 2.5" ssd to 2 m-sata ssd's it would take advance of the xps l702x i can have 6 ssd's o.o

 

@ CaptainKasar

I read somewhere that the alternative empty usb slot that you found was intended for a usb baced bluetooth but Dell decided to combine the bluetooth with the Intel Advanced N series wifi minicards. So the bluetooth slot that you found is free

I'm thinking of making 2 holes on the fron side of the laptop and installing 3 new usb ports !! isn't that crazy? :laugh:
But the disadvantage is that each one of the USB devices you add, will consume more energy power and produce more heat! So Battery drainage and mainboard wear out is not avoidable

Thanks for the info anyway

 

@Kpax7

wow, you are also going to do this mod?

I'm starting to like you hehe

so you are going to install 3 aditional usb ports externally?

well, take in mind, the usbs from the minipcie slots sometimes are used, it depends if the minipecie card plugged in is usb based.

for example, the wifi minipcie I had was not usb based, but the hspa card was, so I could only pick the ones from the mini minipcie slot.

also the usbs from the misterious expansion port I posted the pinouts on the last page is untested.

I didnt attached anything yet since I have already two hdds inside, and a usb mod.

so I am a little worried about free space inside and power consumition.

let me know what are you going to try

however I'm almost sure you will be able to get at least an aditional usb device using those mods

 

ok, have some updates.

after take appart the unit to upgreade the proccesor, I also decided to finally investigate the misterious usb port I found at the motherboard schematics PDF

made some tests.












after the tests, I can say that it is definitly a usb port and it works.

on windows, when I plug something, the device connection sound appears, and it appears conecting a device, however it says device not recognized.

I supose it is caused due missing R718 and R719 resistors.

since those points were bigger than the ones from the connector and didnt had any component, I rasped and used to soldering the data wires instead connecting the wires to the conector pins.

I supose the missing resistors are causing issues with the usb devices, so I will need to test different resistors until I get it working properly.

 

tobad i have an l702x ver, so my lanes are difrent

 

well, the minipcie slots are the same, so if one of your minipcie cards are not usb based, you can wire the usb pins to another internal usb device like I did

I did the minipcie usb mod with this diagram


pins 38 and 36 are the interesting ones

you just need to find a 5V point and a GND spot in the motherboard to solder the usb device power pins


in the case of L502X, I just followed the pins traces on the motherboard until I found a confortable spot to rasp and solder tin there

 

Do you have the rest of the schematic ? It seems my power hub is failling and I need to resolder and replace. Have you an idea of the model ? (symptom is overrcurrent).

Bastien

 

There you go


Schematic Download


mmm, not sure, I dont have the machine take appart.

however, I suspect it can be a damaged 5v voltage regulator.

do you have a multimeter/tester?

 

its nice all those usb ports but for usb 2.0 i wouldnt go this far though, its slow and we are in usb 3.0 times, also have you found any hidden sata ports ? since intel rapid storage says there 2 more sata ports but i ar not that smart and i dont have the right tools to find it out there they are

 

well, even in "usb 3.0 times" there are devices with can even work on usb 1.1 without waste speeds, like wireless mouse, or the usb to bluetooth 2.0 I'm using there ^^, not everything uses the high speeds of usb 3.0 ^^

well, I didnt found any extra sata port, anyway, I supose they can be found by using the chipset pinout there may be some accesible pins by following the traces

accoording to this


http://www.intel.cn/content/www/cn/zh/chipsets/6-chipset-c200-chipset-datasheet.html

most of the unused sata ports are low speed 3 Gb/s compared with the 6 Gb/s ones

Sata0 6 Gb/s
Sata1 6 Gb/s
Sata2 3 Gb/s
Sata3 3 Gb/s
Sata4 3 Gb/s
Sata5 3 Gb/s

My L502x is currently dead and have Hardware damage on it, so I cant test anything now, but can provide pictures of it if needed.

I'm waiting for another motherboard, but not sure how much it will take, I'm using a temporal old desktop machine meanwhile

 

wow you broke it ? damn , sofar i didnt manage to break mines except the lid, somhow the screwholders on the holders broke so when opening it pushout the bezel, and **** the lid is damn expansive, even more then the screen itself ,

you got a point there though i dont have that many usb devices most are hdds so im actualy looking for sata ports instead, problem is with the usb 3.0 the hdds dont functon normal, it keep dc'in as i told before

the sata's are for regular hdd's anyways, though i know ths setup is kind of ****t up, 2 internal satas are sata 3 6gb/s , esata is sata 2 3gb/s and odd sata is sata 1 ? 1.5gb/s ? why sata 1 ?

they are for ext hdds anyway, its not that i attach an ssd , but it makes things alot easyer if i can find them but problem is i dont have the tools to check if they are hte right pins , the xps l702 is still difrent from 502

also damn 900+ pages?! whare should i look for this, only text no pictures >_>

 

not sure why, I was changing one of the mods I did, power was off, and everything seemed fine, not sure if the motheboard got damaged with static electricity, it just doesnt work and one of the chips get too hot, so I will be unable to make the machine boot again unless the motherboard replacement finally arrives.

well, relating the sata ports, I didnt found anything, also with my current machine status I cant test anything. but anyway, near the chipset,there may be some sata related pins, the problem is that they may not be wired and it would be needed to remove the chipset to access those pins from behind.

the usb ports, I found them by checking the standard minipcie pinouts.

and the other usb port into the not soldered conector (stone module), I ofund it by reading one of the L502x pdf schematics

but getting sata ports may be more difficult, you can may buy minipcie to sata adaptors, I think there are someone posted on this topic, but since there is very little space insider the laptop, it would be a external disk with a mess of cables comming from inside, and also would need a external power supply to feed the disks.

that would be like a desktop machine, with those mods, the mobility would be near none ^^

 

well ext power supply i have 4 amps runnng 4-5 hdds at timebut using a single data cable is anoying an yeah i know about hte mini pci you told that but i dont want to keep my notebook open just for sata ports, an i dont want to remove wifi device for it for me i have to leave off keyboard to use the mini pci slot and thats anoying

 

well, you would need to have your laptop open anyway if we find and use any extra Sata ports on the motherboard.

hdds arent small enough to fit into the laptop free spaces.

just two internal hdds are posible, one if the main laptop hdd, and the other one could be there using a hdd caddy for the optical drive ^^

 

that i know but below i can hide the cables behind the cover, i can have 3 if i count odd, but its only 1.5gb/s thats way to slow for nowdays hdds

 

humm i asked before , but is there an way to make wwan port to work with msata ?

 

that probably would need BIOS support, or at least some kind of loader wich boot from there.

I saw at this forum that they talk about an app named BootICE

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Hardwa...ata-as-boot-drive-in-bios/td-p/2815185/page/2

you can give that a try

 

it wont screw up the current windows does it ?, i dont want to boot from there tbh its a small 32gb samsung one i pulled of a dead notebook witch was a medion

Capacity: 32GB
NAND flash memory type: Multi-Level Cell (MLC)
Form Factor: mSATA
Interface: SATA III 6Gb's
Characteristics: SMART
Width: 30 mm Depth: 3.8 mm Height: 51 mm
Drive Transfer Rate: 600 MBps
Data Rate: 500 MBps (read) / 90 MBps (write)
MTBF: 1,500,000 hours
Interfaces: 1 x SATA 6Gb / s - 52-pin mini-SATA
Min Operating Temperature: 0 ° C
Max. Operating temperature: 70 ° C
Humidity Operating 5 - 95% (non-condensing)

i might use it as cache and temp, or maby even set windows on it but will it realy work on the wwan port ?

also isnt wwan port usb ? or is it some combinable connection like sata 3 an pci or something ?

 

well, if you dont want to boot from there, then you may be able to use is just as a data or cache unit like you said.

not sure, but by just plugging it, does windows not recognize it as a new drive?
may need drivers, anyway I cant tell you more since I never had one of those minipcie drives.

 

msata and mpcie are not compatible:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19475285

 

yes i plugged in but no reaction in bios or windows as it doesnt even exist, no unknown devices

 

i have another question i tried to google it but no luck, is there a way to get rid of dell audio? i want to normal realtek interface, the dell audio limits everything and it sucks, and yes i use offical realtek hda drivers , but for some reason it also installs dell audio gui out of no where

 

Hola Capatano!

Did the 'extra external USB port' project ever take off?

I've just got everything together for some recording and now I have no ports for connecting external storage...

Maybe I can get away with a hub (the one I think I threw out didn't seem to work with the USB devices I was trying at the time)...

 

mmm, I tried it using the pins from the dell little stone module pinout, however I had no luck, windows detected a usb device, but never recognized it. tried with many usb devices, tried switch the data+ and data- ports, someone in the bios-mods forums told me it could be about large wires, but I dont think that is the issue, didnt tested that yet since my L502X motherboard is temporally dead.

you can give it a try, the minipcie usb ports work fine unless you use a usb minipcie based card at the same time you use also a usb device to the same pins.

you can also give a try to the little stone module port, if you use shorter wires, you may have more luck than me

hubs are cheap and easy since no electronics needed, but if you have some time and you like electronics, you can try it, also internal usb ports should be more efficient than just use hubs wich split the port speed ^^

 

Nice to read you, capitan.

Johnny, the mpcie card capitan mentioned gives an additional usb2.0 port without modding.

This is an example:
http://www.amazon.de/Delock-MiniPCIe-Buchse-full-size/dp/B00AD1G1RC

I tried to use it myself as a place for a logitech nano-receiver, but the range was disappointing.

 

yeah, the same thing happened with my internal bluetooth mod, the range is reduced because it is internal, it would need another mod to the usb device antenna to extend the range.

and relating the minipcie mod, the interesting thing is that it allow to use a minipcie device plus a usb mod device simultaneously (only if the minipcie is not usb based, because if it is usb based two usb devices using the same pins will conflict)

 

ok, some updates, my L502X finally died,while I was trying to fix it (without success)

However I found more interesting stuff at the motherboard you guys may take advantage of it.

I found two more usb ports.

one of them is probably free and usable for all or at least most people. (the touchscreen one, since most people dont have a touch screen)





I found those ports while checking the technical schematics.






you also can check all the usb ports here.





it shows all the usb ports on the motherboard and its ussage (except the two usb 3.0 wich are from a PcieX1 controller)

the system have more ports as you can see, but sadly they are disabled and probably not accesible for soldering since they are probably under the chipset but dont have soldering spots unless you remove the chipset.

you can enable or disable any port with my modded BIOS.

on BIOS Setup - > Advanced-> SouthBridge Configuration -> SB USB Configuration



my L502X is now fully dead, so that was my last bios and hardware contribution, at least for a long time.

thank you all for reading

 

its nice to have many usb2.0 ports , i wish you find some usb3.0 instead though, or atleast some more sata's but i guess that is abit to difficult, the chip reports like 6 sata while there only 4 anvailable , but it is alot work finding 7 pins while 3 are ground that leaves 4 , woulda been nice if i had one more for ext

 

sata ports could probably get posible to get from the chipset, but I dont know anyone capable of manually solder wires from there.
and I doubt the required pins are wired from the chipset itself, just the ones already used.

about the usb 3.0 they they are only from the renesas controller and not sure if there are more than the existing two ones.

 

well 4 existin 2 used from the info on hwinfo on the usb 3.0 ports, sata as i said

so goes for sata 6gb/s, there 6 and it only use 2 and then whe have a esata 3gb/s and an odd on a clasic 1.5gb/s sata port

i dont know the reason while the chips is capable of 6x sata 6gb/s

they just added 2 more controllers probaly for the esata and odd sata




as you can se it reports so i wonder realy, but im not capable of finding them , im not that tech, i can solder but findin is to difficult for me

 

mmm, that is interesting, the renesas controller report 4 usb 3.0 ports.
and there are only two of them, there could be posible to get another two usb 3.0 ports.

that may be easier that soldering directly from the hm67 chipset.

I lost the schematics and most of my tools while switching to the new computer.

if we get the schematics of the UPD720200F1-DAK-A present at the motherboard you may be able to add two aditional working USB ports.

 

that would be sweet tho , cuz i use a couple usb 3.0 docks