Studio 1535-1537 owners, keep your media buttons glowing! | NotebookReview

Mastershroom wat

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I just saw this excellent post on the Dell Community forums, detailing how it is possible for users of the Studio 1535-1537 models (and possibly Studio 17 as well) to have their touch-sensitive media keys stay lit constantly, not just glow when touched. All credit for this goes to 'srees304' from the Dell forums; I had no part in it. I am merely copying and pasting his words:

srees304 said:

I opted for my own method of dealing with the glow. I'm an electrical/electronics engineer, so I did some work on my laptop... After studying the circuitry a bit in the media panel, I came up for this hardware hack to make the lights stay dimly aglow all the time, but otherwise behave as normal.
If you are as brave a soul as I am, you can follow my guide. But don't hold me responsible if you break your machine! If you are interested in having me do the work to your laptop, drop me a note...
This is a permanent fix, but it can be undone/changed with no damage. The brightness is not adjustable without changing the resistor values or using potentiometers instead. Potentiometers are much more prone to failure/flakiness, so I recommend sticking with resistors.
You'll need:
- philips screwdriver
- soldering iron and solder (while I sorely wish I could afford a nice Metcal iron [which I recommend for surface mount work], it can be managed with a cheap radio shack iron.
- tweezers
- superglue and preferably some accelerator for it (I used Testors 3517C and 3518C)
- 30AWG wire-wrap wire (available from Digikey.com)
- 10 pack of surface mount resistors (I got part 311-7.32KFRCT-ND from Digikey.com - cut tape) These are 7.32K Ohms +/-1%.
- very steady hands!
I also recommend having a multimeter handy to test and verify work before re-assembling.
First, remove your battery and remove the two screws holding the media panel in:

Remove the media panel (easiest to pull from under the screen as below):

Disconnect the panel by flipping up the connector holding the ribbon cable in:

You'll need to carefully peel back the black tape covering the circuit board, try not to mess it up as you'll need to put it back. I cut my tape by the connector, as you don't need to modify the wifi/disk/bt lights.

On the picture below, where the ribbon connector goes, are six pads. The voltages, from left to right, are 3.285V, 3.285V, 4.98V, 0.6mV (ground), 3.286V, and 3.286V. You will be needing to connect to the ground pad, which is fourth from the left, in the middle of the connector.

Next, you need to prepare pads for attaching resistors. Add a touch of solder to the negative side of D1 through D9, and the ground pad I just mentioned above:

Once all the pads have some fresh solder on them, attach one end of a resistor to each pad (each of D1-D9 need their own resistor ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE, but don't put one on the ground pad by the ribbon connector).

For convenience, not all will be able to point the same way, since the LED's aren't all in the same direction anyway (watch to be sure they are on the negative sides!):

Now, prepare the unattached ends of each resistor with a little fresh solder. Then use short segments of the wire-wrap wire (don't forget to strip the ends a bit) to attach the ground pad by the ribbon connector to each of the unattached ends of the resistors that were placed. I found it helpful to put a tiny drop of superglue on each wire to hold it in place, then a spot of accelerator to instantly dry it. Once that's done, they won't move while you solder them. Watch out, if you burn superglue with your iron the fumes are absolutely terrible! This is how mine looked when done with attaching wire:

And, a closer picture:

Next, TEST your connections with a multimeter! I measure from the negative side of each of D1 through D9 to the ground pad by the ribbon connector. You should be getting somewhere in the ballpark of 7.3K ohms (or whatever size resistor you ordered). Assuming all is well, put the black tape back over the circuit board neatly:

Now reattach your ribbon cable, snap the media panel back into place, replace the two screws and battery. Time to test! Here is how mine looks in daylight (sorry, blurry photo). You can't really tell the buttons are glowing (didn't want to burn anything out or pull more power than needed), but you can see the BT light is lit.

Taken to a dark room, you can see the buttons glow! BT and numlock are full power.

You can see not all buttons are equal in brightness - this is due to variations in components (mine and the circuit board), the *tiny* amount of current we are pulling (0.3mA per button), and the fact the board wasn't designed for this .

Last, you can see the buttons still light up significantly when pressed (increase volume):

Let me know what you think!

Click to expand...

So, if you're at all handy with a soldering iron (or know someone who is), this looks like a great mod for you. I'd try it in a heartbeat if I still had my old 1535.