Getac B300 project

Hi guys, first post here. I'm a long time PC builder but I'm new to laptops. I just bought a stripped Getac B300 off Ebay for $60. It's the 2011 model, 2Ghz I7 620LM, 4Gb DDR3 1600. It has x2 USB2.0, x2 serial, VGA, HDMI, eSATA, firewire, RJ11 with 56k modem and RJ45 gigabit ethernet, SD card reader, smart card reader, fingerprint scanner, TPM, expresscard 54, MXM port, and x2 mPCIE slots (Wifi is in one). Seller listed it as no hard drive/caddy, disc drive, battery, or wifi card, but I opened it up and it turns out they pulled the 3g WWAN card instead of the Wifi card, so it still has a 3 antenna intel 6300 series ultimate-N card in it, score! My main problem is that all the other missing parts are very expensive, batteries are more than $300 and they want $500 for a 160GB SSD. Also the parts are hard to find, I've tried to order a battery twice from different places, only to have both of them get back to me as back ordered indefinitely. I have found a compatible battery on Aliexpress for $65 that I think I'll take a chance on.

My goals for this thing are:
-bootable from an SSD, smaller one is OK I don't need a terabyte of storage
-upgrade memory to 8Gb (the newer model is 8Gb so I assume the MB will accept it)
-utilize as many of the upgrade options as possible to give it the most connectivity. Things like adding more USB ports with the unused headers on the MB, finding something to do with the expresscard54 slot, and maybe adding a graphics card to the MXM port, but I'll worry about that after the hard drive problem is straightened out. There's lots of unused space inside the case that I could cram stuff in, especially If I don't put an optical drive in it. Even if I do the drive bay's thick enough to hold three slim drives.

The first thing I want to get done is find some way to attach a hard drive. When I ordered it I was thinking "No hard drive caddy, no big deal I'll just 3d print an adapter." Wrong. It looks like these things use a proprietary connector, it's definitely not the standard SATA. Check out this video for a view of the drive caddy:
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It has a built in heater so it will work at colder temperatures (because it's a rugged military grade model), but I'm not interested in keeping that. It looks like the connector on the motherboard supplies power to the heater and connects to the drive itself through a proprietary ribbon cable. I'm trying to trick Getac's service department into thinking that I already have a drive and caddy and that I just need the ribbon to replace a damaged cable, because I've heard that they have terrible customer service and do not care to help you at all if you're not a government agency or multinational corporation. I doubt this approach will work, but worth a shot. If I can get a cable I will just 3d print a caddy and install a normal SSD (it's SATA II so they're cheap).

This is the HDD/heater connector. It has 50 pins, 2 rows of 25. Anybody ever seen one like this before?
If I can't get a ribbon cable from Getac I'm going to have to figure out a way to make an adapter. I have a manual for this motherboard and it shows the pinout of this connector:

Am I correct in assuming that the pins with X's are dead pins?
This is also interesting:

It is the CD/swap bay connector. Getac offers an extra battery or HD/SSD's that can replace the DVD drive. So it appears this connector has battery power, SATA, heater power and sensor for the HDD heater, and PCIE lanes. I wonder what the PCIE lanes are used for, SSD maybe?
Here's a pic of that connector:

It has 68 pins, 2 rows of 34, and they are staggered, not directly across from each other like the HDD connector. Can anybody ID this type of connector?
So does anybody have a line on where to get parts for these things? I've googled until I can't stand it anymore and turned up very little. It also has an empty Expresscard 54 and mPCIE slot (used to be 3g), any suggestions as to what I could use those for? I've heard that some mPCIE slots that were meant for WWAN cards don't have PCIE connectivity, so I'm trying to confirm that before I put too much thought into mPCIE accessories. At least I know it works for WWAN since that's what came out of it and it has the antennas for it already, but I'm not really interested in replacing it. Maybe GPS though.

 

Things to note: Getac laptops are very hard to obtain spare parts and accessories for. And that was when new. Those accessories and parts are also severely expensive. Of all the ruggedized laptops built, Panasonic ToughBooks are the easiest to purchase said parts and accessories for, even though brand new, pricey.

 

@Giterdunn you could use expresscard slot for eGPU if you plan on using it for gaming. Otherwise, you could get an Expresscard to USB3.0 or Expresscard to USB3.0+eSATA adapter. Be aware that these USB adapters require additional power to run HDDs, and run pretty hot themselves. You can use WWAN mini PCIe port for USB or dual microSD adapter - or some WWAN module, of course.

 

@Kent T That's why I'm trying to hack it to use cheaper off the shelf parts.
@Starlight5 I don't game much but the graphics card option is interesting because I do some light CAD work. It already has an eSATA port but USB3.0 would be great. I've looked into those microSD adapters, looks like they work on the USB part of the mPCIE port, which is good because I did confirm that my WWAN card slot only has the USB and power pins of an mPCIE port, no PCIE lanes.

I've also thought about trying to restore the functionality of the WWAN slot by running PCIE lanes to it, either from the MXM, Expresscard, or optical drive connector. I could also make it an mSATA connector by running SATA wires to it from either the ODD or HDD connectors (I'd like to keep my external eSATA port).

 

I guess you can solder then? If so, it would be way easier for you to carry this project.

You can make mSATA by connecting SATA lanes to where the PCIe are supposed to be, I've done that. As it seems, you have the schematics, which is pretty much obligatory for such mods. Check the hub (PCH) for any SATA lanes that are left as Test Points (TP). You can probably wire the mSATA from there, not sure how the BIOS would handle it though. For the HDD, you have the pinout - just solder regular connector. Don't get PCIe lanes from the MXM, quite likely you would mess-up the addressing. BTW Can you make a picture of the GPU, front and back, possibly a good quality ones? Oh and yes X means not connected/implemented.

Good luck!

 

@triturbo It doesn't have a graphics card, just an empty MXM port. It has integrated graphics on the I7 620LM processor. Good idea with the test points, is that where you wired yours? Did you have to change any other pins besides just SATA to where PCIE should have been? I saw a post somewhere where a guy had to change some power pins also, but my diagrams are showing them to be the same. Maybe he had some kind of odd card or something, just thought I'd make sure before I fry something lol.
I'm sure I can physically make the connections, if not by wiring to the socket then by soldering onto the card, but I wasn't sure about the software side of things. I think I have a better chance of having the bios recognize it as a storage device if I have it wired to the optical drive connector, since Getac sells a HD that connects there so it must go to the SATA bus. Then again the test point would also have to lead to the bus, if it has any. I have a whole PDF that details every connector and bus, but doesn't show how anything is connected to each other. I also have this block diagram that is sort of vague, i.e. it doesn't show test points or even where the SATA bus is.

There's a lot of cool stuff on that diagram that I am having trouble physically finding on the board. For example the COM5 port for GPS. I've found that Super I/O bus by tracing back from the serial ports, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of port or header for hooking up GPS. It was an option from the factory, I kinda assumed it was the WWAN slot, like you could either have GPS or WWAN, but they do sell them with both. I don't think this unit ever had GPS because I've accounted for all the antenna that are in it, 3 for WIFI and 2 for WWAN, as well as 1 for each that goes to a pass-through docking port connector. There's also some stuff on there that I doubt this unit has, or if it does they may not be utilized. Like the PCMCIA cardbus controller, and the second PCMCIA controller, because I don't even have one. It has expresscard and smartcard reader instead, and I don't even see expresscard on this diagram.

 

Do you have heat-sink for the MXM module? If not, that might be a dead end on the MXM street. You could always make one yourself, but it would be REALLY difficult, especially if you haven't seen how the original looks like. Can you measure how much space is there? I'd guess that it's MXM-A, but it never hurts to check.

I wired mine to the docking SATA and the second to the ODD, since I've removed it altogether. If I had Test Points, I would've tried for sure, sadly I don't, neither for SATA, nor for USB. No free lunch for me I guess.

That's correct SATA pins = PCIe pins i.e. RXN = RXN, RXP = RXP you get the idea. The rest of the pins were fine for me. Actually you only need 3.3v on pins 39 and 41.

If it's not too much hassle for you, TPs always worth the shot. If successful you'll have one more drive, on top of the already existing. I don't know if you have use for the ODD, that's why I suggested to check for TPs first. If you don't, just solder it there, like I did.

That's the block diagram that is usually on the first or second page of the given machine's schematic. Usually there are pages on which each of these stuff can be found, but as it the case here, sometimes the designers are lazy, or stupid, I don't know.

The WWAN/GPS can be combined module and share the same antennas. I guess that's the case for you as well.

 

Thanks for the info. They never sold this model with a graphics card, but the x500 had the same motherboard which I think is why this board has MXM. There is room for one however, if I use an extender cable and put it in the optical bay. I'm a machinist so making a heatsink isn't a problem, but I don't know how well the case will handle absorbing more heat. The b300 is a fanless model, it has copper heat sinks on the processor and chipset, and copper spreader tubes to spread the heat out to the magnesium bottom plate of the case. If I mate a GPU to the bottom plate that's just more heat it has to shed, and I don't know if that would end up making the processor run hotter. What I could do is mount it to a regular laptop heatsink/blower fan setup, and let that breathe through the optical drive door. That way it would still be waterproof when closed. I haven't put much thought into a graphics card though, I didn't even know they made laptop graphics cards before I googled what that MXM connector was lol. Right now I'm trying to focus on bootable storage.
I had another idea for the mPCIE slot too. If I rewire it with PCIE lanes instead of SATA I can install one of those SATA III controller cards, and plug in 2 SSD's or an SSD and an HD. I don't know if the bios would recognize it or not though.

 

Passive cooling is not for most MXM GPUs. You'll definitely need a blower in there Since it's passive, I doubt that it has slot though. Open it up and share some pictures.

You have to check if you can boot off PCIe device. I've looked at this mod myself for the 5920G, but left it behind, since it can't boot off PCIe. A Grub loader would've fixed that, but that's kinda tedious.

 

@triturbo grub loader? How can I tell if it will boot from pcie? I think there's a chance it will since the optical connector has mpcie lanes which I beleive were used for an SSD. I'll post some pics tonight, I just got power back central NC's been dark since Friday.

There's plenty of room inside the case because it used huge drive cages, I could fit 4 slim SSD's in the hard drive slot, and the optical drive slot is thick enough for 3 slim drives, the case is about an inch and a half thick in most places. Plus there's room on either side of the MB because it floats in the middle of all that space, just the smart card and express card slots underneath it and mpcie slots above. That's why I'm interested in the sata3 controller option, it gives me more connectors (2) to use so I can fit more drives.

 

The caddy for the B300 has a male connector but my V100x and S400 both have the female end,the caddy appears to be the same size. Thus Getac has boned us on using the same caddy.