2510p under an nc2400 cover

Why fitting the 2510p motherboard into an nc2400 cover?

1. I really _hate_ the touchpads.
2. I have a nice leatherette sticker on the nc2400 and I could not find the same for 2510p.

So what I did:
- Fitting nc2400 keyboard into a 2510p motherboard: cut 0.5-1 mm from the left side of the wider connector to fit into the socket.
- Installed Broadcom Crystal HD (now ~14$ with shipping on ebay) into the WLAN mPCIe socket.
- Installing a Ralink RT2571WF chipset based card into the WWAN socket to have wireless connectivity.
- The modem has been physically removed: I have not used modems in the last 10 years.
- Removed original hard drive.
- A 2.5" SATA drive in a caddy instead of DVD drive.
- Fitting the 2510p LCD screen+microphone+ambient light sensor into the nc2400 top cover. Took me a night to figure out how to do and implement because of physical fitting problems. (Unfortunately the nc2400's LCD is not compatible with the 2510p motherboard regardless of the same socket on the motherboard.)
- The motherboard has two different covers: the bottom is from 2510p, the upper part is from nc2400. I had to remove small plastic and other things internally for the perfect fit.
- nc2400's power button+media keys cover is fitted above the keyboard since I was not able to fit a 2510p's well and the placement of the multimedia keys is different on nc2400 and 2510p. It is not working because the nc2400's media key panel is not compatible with the 2510p's motherboard. I use a few shortcuts in Ubuntu for volume control.
(- Once I broke the the ribbon cable between the motherboard and the fingerpoint reader. Experience: It is the same type of ribbon cable like the cable between the pointstick on the nc2400/2510p keyboards <-> motherboard.)

Weight with 9-cell battery: ~1.66 kg
Weight with 6-cell: ~1.56 kg

Summary:
- 2510p's LCD/microphone/ambient light sensor with nc2400's cover and hinges.
- 2510p's upper part of the bottom case has been replaced with nc2400's part.
- nc2400's keyboard has been attached to the 2510p's motherboard.
- nc2400's fingerpoint reader has been replaced with 2510's fingerpoint reader.
- 2.5" hard drive in a caddy instead of the DVD drive and original hard drive removed.
- disadvantage: not working media keys.

 

Nice work. I always wondered if the nc2400 top cover would fit on a 2510P in case someone wanted a flat surface minus the touchpad. Yeah.. the NC2400 used a CCFL-backlit LCD and the 2510P uses a lower power LED-backlit LCD with a brighter screen. That and the overall slower performance of a nc2400 is why I don't recommend those systems.

If you post the full specs of your system in the 2510P owner's thread and mods you've done, I can add you in the table on the first page there. You'll be the first with a nc2400_palmrest entry.

 

Very interesting how you were able to pull that off!

On a related note, I've always wondered if you could stuff an nc8430/nw8440 (8400 series) motherboard into an nc8230/nw8240 (8200 series) case, given how unreliable the 8200 series motherboard is (random freezes). The port layout is identical, and I know for a fact that you can use an 8200 screen on an 8400, and vice-versa. The only real differences I see between the 8200 and the 8400 models are:
--8200 has multibay; 8400 has fixed optical bay
--8200 has IR port; 8400 doesn't
--8200 casing is slightly thicker towards the front than the 8400 casing
--8200 has a much larger metal heatsink assembly that covers the entire left half of the motherboard (including the 2nd RAM slot); the 8400's heatsink assembly is much smaller and the 2nd RAM slot is exposed (you still have to remove the keyboard to get to the 2nd RAM slot, though)
--Different vent layouts between the two models.

I don't have an 8200 series machine on me, and I'm not willing to gut my nw8440, so I'm wondering if anyone is willing to give this a shot?