P7230 upgrades

I see that the LeoG forum has gone, it was a good little specialist forum for Fujitsu P series ultraportables. I thought i would note down the upgrades that i have done recently and post some benchmarks.

Anyway in July 08 i bought a pink P7230 core solo 1.2, 1GB, CD Drive, 60GB 4200, 3945ABG from the US as a gift for someone in my family.
In the end the core solo processor and 4200 HD proved to be just too slow.

I had the core solo processor removed and fitted with a U7600 (U7600 is the max that it will support). I also added 2GB, DVD Supermulti, a 5300 wifi card, WWAN and a 128GB V4 Photofast drive. As you would expect the laptop feels transformed. It cost me £110 to have the processor upgraded. I bought a defective TZ motherboard for £26 and the processor was removed from that board. I reflashed the BIOS to make sure that the BIOS was seeing the CPU properly. I've also upgraded to W7 Professional 32bit.

I had the motherboard changed about a year ago under warranty. This laptop is under warranty until 2011 and i just actually sent it in last week to have the casing replaced for free. I sent it with all the upgrades and they never said a thing. Of course you can buy U7600's motherboards on ebay now but i wanted to keep the original one and serial number. Fujitsu Siemens international support continues to be excellent. They had the casing shipped from the US in less a week and told me to wait until it arrived to send it in. They sent UPS to me when it arrived and they got the laptop last Friday and i had back on Tuesday and this is in Germany and i'm in the UK.

First of all i opted for a 64GB V2 Photofast drive and then for storage space reasons upgraded to the V4 drive. I got the drive from Photofast UK and i got a £20 discount on the drive.

I also got a sim card holder soldered to the motherboard. I sent the laptop to vaiorefurbs on ebay to do that. I fitted the antenna in the bezel myself and got the wwan parts from a donar laptop. It is better to stick with cards that Fujitsu use and i used a MC8780.
I think you can buy the wwan board here.
UMTS FPC (INCL. HOLDER) for P7230 YK7G (high-tech.be)

The new cpu runs cooler than what it did with the core solo processor. I'm also using the copper heatsink with ICD7.

It is a lovely little laptop, shame that i cannot get the fingerprint reader working lol.

With tweaking battery life is outstanding over 12hrs with the standard and internal battery at 30% brightness.
The signal is very strong now as you would expect. I added a 3rd antenna and just stuck it on top of the heatsink. It seems to pull up a better signal than what i get with my TT with a half mini 5300 with the 3rd antenna located in the bezel.

I tried to look into overclocking but may be i was using the wrong settings but i couldn't get that to work. The PLL code for this laptop is ICS9LPR311BKLF. I will try again and if i get anywhere i will edit. It should be able to overlock to 1.33ghz-1.4ghz easily but the person who owns this won't go that extra mile lol. I know though that some people are interested in overclocking their P7230's.

It's all the extra touches like the modular dvd drive/internal batteries that make me like this laptop. It also looks pretty cute in white as well.

This laptop should last a couple of years now for the purposes that it is used for.

 

Hi Rachel

I actually have your original Leog.net thread (core solo swap) saved and am in the process of adding that and a bunch of other saved threads to my website (" Migrating information" thread on this forum). Some of the LeoG forum is still cached in Google, but they'll be purged eventually.

It's too bad. Good information out there.

 

Hi onion

Yes, there was loads of good information on LeoG especially for the P series of laptops. The spammers just got too much in the end. It's a shame.

I'm sure your archive will be very helpful.

 

I did buy a like new P7230 core duo laptop originally to with the intention to swap the core solo motherboard. I sold of the parts for more than what i bought the laptop for.

I couldn't though sell of the core solo motherboard as there was no interest in it and also the fact that i mentioned about the the laptop still being in warranty and it being sent in for warranty repair made me decide to upgrade the core solo motherboard and then possibly sell of the core duo motherboard.

The core duo motherboard works perfectly but when i was trying to get the wwan cable out i detached one of the clips that hold it in place and now i cannot put it back and i think a bit has come of at the end. These are easy enough to replace but where am i going to get a replacement from?

 

Just found out leog is gone...

I gave away my P7010 to my aunt & uncle for them to use as a HTPC. That little machine have served me well.

 

Hey,

I just found your forum and need to ask you a question.

I do have a P7230 too, with the slow U1400 Processor. I did buy an U7600, but then I found out the Processor is not exchangable.

How (or where) did you get the CPU exchanged? Can you give me more information about this process?

 

Hi Destin Rayn
I live in the UK and sent it to vaiorefurbs on ebay. They have done jobs for me before in the past. It cost £110 to take a cpu of a motherboard and transplant it on to the P7230 motherboard i needed it for.
May be send them an email through ebay.
You need to do a BGA job with this.
There are some members of this forum that can do this job also and they live in the US.
Sony Vaio SZ Series 19.5V AC Power Supply VGP-AC19V24 on eBay (end time 24-Sep-10 08:27:10 BST)

I'm still stuck with that spare U2500 core duo motherboard because i cannot get that thing i took a picture of in my post.

 

you mention battery tweaks in your first post, can you elaborate on that? ideally for things that can be addressed to a P7120.

 

thebranded
The integrated graphics was put into max power savings. Also, the wireless adaper settings transmit power and roaming was set to medium instead of max. Also, in power saver mode the wireless setting was set to max power savings.
Intel speed step was enabled in the BIOS with hardware power management enabled.

 

hmm i dont use wifi so cant save power there.

and i already have the speed step enabled in BIOS and set to max on AC and batt optimized on Batt.

Guess its time for a new battery!

 

My neice cracked the screen yesterday and of course she telephoned me asking how much the screen costs and if i can help find someone to fix it and i could take the hint.
I bought a replacement screen and it cost me £100.
I'm hoping that i can replace the display without having to completely dismantle this laptop. I can't remember too well and i had to dismantle it before anyway so did not give it too much attention.

 

Take out the four screws under the pads on front bezel, then pry carefully the bezel away, start from the inside edge. If you are lucky, you can unscrew the hinges from LCD without taking the back cover off.

Can't explain much better since the explosion drawing I have kinda sucks

 

Thank you KLF
I'm glad to learn that this job is not going to be a difficult one. One of the screws is stripped inside or something and i was not looking forward to possibly dealing with that.