*HP 2510p Owners Lounge*

EduardoLM,

That was a great read ! You really had to do a few not-so-easy modifications with that Topda caddy to make it work...

That's why I'd recommend the Fenvi caddy, which is full metal, has the same components as the Topda caddy (i.e. Marvell 88SA8040-TBC1 chip) and has the necessary screw connections (see elcontador's post here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...7-hp-2510p-owners-lounge-122.html#post9155653

With elcontador's and EduardoLM's permissions, I'd like to summarize the comparison of the 2 PCB boards (Fenvi vs. Topda) in these pictures:
View attachment 96593
The Fenvi looks newer, judging from the serials found on the chip+PCB. The only downside with the Fenvi caddy, however: it doesn't have an activity LED (no real problem, since the laptop HDD activity LED still works).

Thanks again for your post, guys !

 

Thanks for the kind words, Kryptex! The only detail I would add is that Fenvi PCB has the LED soldering pads, so a LED can easily be added to it. I think elcontador already mentioned it, but I would like to confirm that. Thanks again!

 

EduardoLM,

I've read through your posts and, if I'm not mistaking, you have only the plastic Topda caddy. No 1.8" ZIF drive, right ? What kind of 2.5" drive are you using in the Topda caddy ? Did you buy a Momentus XT as I recommended ?

I'm asking this because I've just ordered 2 Fenvi caddies for a couple of 2510p laptops and I intend to install a 500 GB ST95005620AS Momentus XT drive inside (1st gen.). The caddies should arrive in about 15-20 days from China, but I'm wondering how much power this hybrid drive (at 7200 RPM HDD) sucks out of the 2510p's battery...

From what I can find, the power consumptions are as follows:
- 1.0 W for the Marvell 88SA8040 chipset inside the caddy
- 1.3 W for the Momentus XT when idle and around 3 W when reading/writing

The latest, 3rd gen hybrid drive, Seagate SSHD @ 5400 RPM (ST500LM000) draws less power, around 0.9 W idle and 2-3 W for reads/writes, but it still has a high price compared to the 1st gen Momentus XT.

On the other hand, an SSD draws less power. For example Samsung or Crucial have low power consumptions in idle (0.1 - 0.5 W). The active state on SSDs kicks in less frequently since they do their jobs faster than mechanical (or even hybrid) HDDs. So, a pure SSD would probably be a better idea to use in the caddy (Samsung 830/840 or Crucial M4).

I'm looking at these numbers since the whole machine with a regular 1.8" Toshiba ZIF drive consumes around 8 - 10 W and the battery lasts for ~ 4 hours. This means that the extra 2 - 4 W coming from a caddy+2.5" HDD could lower battery life significantly, even by 1-1.5 hours...

PS: I don't know if the 1.0 W power consumption of the Marvell 88SA8040 chip inside the caddy is still valid. Newer revisions may include lower idle/standby power draws. Anyway, the power hog would still be the 2.5" drive, especially if it's a 7200 rpm Momentus XT...

 

Kryptex,

I'm using an old 2.5" SATA Samsung, 80GB, 5400RPM drive in the caddy. I already had this hard drive and ended up using it, I have no money right now to buy anything better! I also have that 1.8" mSATA Kingspec 64GB SSD we talked about some weeks ago, but that one I removed from the notebook, I will try to sell it and get one compatible with the mSATA/ZIF adapter.

In fact, I bought the Topda caddy just to have a functional computer until I can have a good SSD 1.8" unit. Once I manage to do that, I'm going to put the DVD drive back in and store the Topda caddy for future emergencies.

Anyway, I will tell you my battery life on batteries with the Topda caddy and this old drive, just give me some days to do it!

Eduardo

 

Oh, the KingSpec SSD, the one with TRIM issues... I forgot about it !
I see that you want to use a 1.8" mSATA SSD + DVD drive, but I think that will cost you quite a bit, with today's mSATA SSD prices.

With about the same money, you could also do the following:
- no 1.8" drive +
- a good 2.5" HDD/SSD/SSHD in the Topda caddy
- external DVD drive (but you need a 9.5" USB-IDE external case for it).

Also, if you have good soldering skills, you can have the following:
- 1.8" mSATA SSD 32 or 64 GB (Master) +
- 2.5" 5400 rpm HDD in the Topda caddy (modded to Slave - the Marvell chip needs soldering) for the extra storage +
- external DVD drive

Could you please do the following for me ?
1. Have the 80 GB HDD in the Topda caddy and nothing in the 1.8" bay. Fully charge the laptop battery (wait until the green charging LED turns off), then go into BIOS, unplug the charger and wait for the battery to fully discharge (while in the BIOS), until the laptop turns off by itself. Measure the amount of time the battery lasted. Like this, you can be sure you have a steady current draw, with the HDD in idle mode.

2. Do the same time measurement with the Topda + HDD removed (so there is no drive in the laptop).

If you really got more time, it would be interesting to also check another setting:
3. The same time measurement with only the Topda caddy and no HDD in it (in order to get the power draw of the Marvell chip separately). This 3rd situation is not really *that* important.

It would be great info for us if you would have the time to do these tests. Also, could you give us the exact 80 GB HDD model ?

When I'll get the Fenvi caddy, I'll also do these tests myself and post them here.

Thanks !!
KrypteX

 

Hi Kryptex, I did tests 1 and 2, here goes:

1) With caddy and HD, battery lasts 4 hours and 51 minutes

2) With no caddy and no HD, battery lasts 5 hours and 19 minutes

Just to confirm: I did exactly like you said, kept the notebook in BIOS the whole time after a full charge. I also turned wireless off, and put backlight at minimum. My 80GB HD is a Seagate Momentus 5400.3, model ST980811AS. Sorry, I told before it was a Samsung, but it is a Seagate in fact!

And the battery is a 6 cells one, and it's well used, I guess. I bought the notebook used.

If I have some spare time, I'll do test 3 in the next days!

Hope it helps!

Eduardo

 

Thanks, Eduardo !

The difference is not a lot, 28 minutes less battery time with the Marvell caddy+HDD. So let's do some calculations:

We consider the energy of a fully charged 6-cell battery to be about E = 55 Wh (considering there's no wear on it).
The power consumption of the laptop with caddy+HDD is P1 = E/t1 = 55Wh / 4.85h = 11.3 W
The power consumption of the laptop without caddy+HDD is P2 = E/t2 = 55Wh / 5.32h = 10.3 W
The power consumption of the caddy+HDD combo is P1-P2 = 1.0 W, which is a very good value.

If we look up the power consumption at idle of the Seagate ST980811AS drive, we have on page 4 here
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/notebook/momentus/5400_3/100398882c.pdf
P_HDD = 0.6 W

Summarizing:
Laptop = 10.3 W
HDD = 0.6 W
Caddy = 0.4 W
------------------------
Total = 11.3 W

We assumed a perfectly healthy battery, of 55Wh capacity. If the battery has wear, let's say 80% available capacity (44Wh), then the power consumptions P1 and P2 above will be lowered accordingly (e.g. laptop+HDD+caddy 9.0 W, laptop 8.2 W, so HDD+caddy 0.8 W). Then the Marvell caddy alone would only consume 0.8-0.6 W = 0.2 W etc.

Thanks again, Eduardo !

 

Kryptex, thanks a lot for the calculations, they're very instructive!

Here's the battery information of my HP 2510p, I hope it helps to make your calculations even more precise.

I didn't even know it was possible to obtain such a detailed report. And I'm happy to see my battery is almost new, only 17 charges out of 300! It's rare to get something like that on an used notebook at eBay!

 

Thanks, let's recalculate. The full charge capacity of your battery from HP battery check, considering wear, is 4.882 Ah * 10.8 V = 52.73 Wh.

Summarizing:
--------------------
Laptop = 9.91 W (without HDD+caddy)
HDD = 0.60 W (Seagate 5400.3 ST980811AS - 1 platter)
Caddy = 0.36 W (Fenvi 9.5mm IDE-SATA with Marvell 88SA8040 bridge chip)
--------------------------------------------------------
Total = 10.87 W (laptop + HDD+caddy)

The caddy power consumption, 0.36 W, is quite low. Also the HDD consumption at 0.60 W is not that bad either. Some 2-platter 7200 rpm drives consume twice that amount (1.2-1.3 W) when idle , e.g. Momentus XT.

PS:
It is interesting to see that the bare laptop consumes around 10 W. This is strange, I just checked my own laptop with a 120 GB 1.8" @ 4200 Toshiba drive inside + DVD drive and in Windows XP it only consumes around 8 W with screen dimmed to minimum and WiFi on, while idling. Probably the power management kicks in and decreases the overall consumption ?
Eduardo, you could check this easily: in Windows, only on battery, start HP battery check. It should give you the actual current consumption in mA (you can always refresh the page to update the value, just to be sure). How much is it ? Mine is around 750 mA in idle. If we multiply that with the nominal battery voltage 10.8 V, we get around 8 W power consumption.

PS2:
So I just checked the current draw in Win 7 Ultimate SP1 and it varies between 750-1000 mA. That amounts to 8-11 W. So I guess an average power consumption in BIOS of 9.9 W is just about OK.

 

I have a 2510p which I thought I would try and inject new life into by adding a SSD.

I've ordered and received a ZIF-to-mSATA adapter and thanks to my dear brother I was able to purchase a 256 GB Crucial M4 mSATA for no more than ~£70 which is a steal. This disk, however, came with the latest 07MH firmware and I can find no way of flashing the older 000F firmware. Has anybody heard if the 07MH f/w is better than the preceeding ones or am I screwed?

As for the HP bios - I've just read through the last sixty or so pages of this thread and there seem to be some conflicting installation instructions about how to go from the old F.0E I currently have to the modded F.10 one. Some posts emphasize the need for the original F.0F in between and some also say a modded F.0F is needed and others seem to think it's not needed. I have the modded F.10 one in my possession (as per KrypteX's link), but can't seem to find the modded F.0F. Is it neccessary?

/Tiny (That's KjellBrel to you, P0intman ;-) )

 

Hello TinyTurtle and welcome to the forum !

Regarding the M4 mSATA drive, there's no official 000F firmware ISO for mSATA drives (but only for 2.5" versions). So there's no going back to 000F.
For mSATA you have the following firmware ISOs available: 01MG, 04MH and 07MH and you can flash back and forth among these three.
01MG has serious issues, don't use that (the drive's disappearing on boot and BSODs). 04MH and 07MH are almost the same, with 07MH having some rare issues sorted out.
However, all firmwares after 000F have this "drive disappearing on cold boot" issue.
If you don't have these problems, stay on 07MH. Otherwise, try 04MH or sell the SSD and buy something with 000F.
If you have time to read, here's the 07MH firmware update thread:
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...H-for-mSATA-and-070H-for-2-5-quot/td-p/123930

Also, be careful: do NOT update the firmware on a Crucial M4 or Micron C400 drive via the mSATA-ZIF adapter. You may brick the SSD and/or the adapter. You need a native mSATA slot, or an mSATA-SATA adapter, or a PCI-Express to mSATA adpater in a desktop in order to safely flash an mSATA drive.

Regarding the BIOS:
Indeed, there are conflicting infos out there. I've just updated another 2510p and I can confirm the following minimalistic 2-step update order ( if you are currently on a BIOS prior to F.0F and have no boot errors):
1) F.0F original from HP (this is the important step. There were some critical modifications from F.0E to F.0F). Find it here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...&swLang=8&taskId=135&swItem=ob-86024-1&mode=3
2) F.10 modded by nando4
You don't need the intermediary step with modded F.0F.
To clear things up, I agree with post #547 here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...87-hp-2510p-owners-lounge-55.html#post6969848
and with post #1221 here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...7-hp-2510p-owners-lounge-123.html#post9171748

On the other hand, if you get this error on cold boot:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...7-hp-2510p-owners-lounge-122.html#post9149092
then do the following:
flash back to HP's F.0E, then HP's F.0F, then the modded F.10.
Also, don't forget to load BIOS defaults and save after each BIOS flash.

In summary, if you want to be on the safe side, flash as follows:
flash back to HP's F.0E, then HP's F.0F, then the modded F.10.

Hope this helps,
KrypteX
PS: NEVER flash to BIOS F.20 or F.30 ! You will not be able to go back to anything prior to F.20.

 

Thanks for the welcome and the swift reply. I've been a lurker around here for several years now so I've been following your vast help in this thread.

How incredibly annoying that the 000F is available for the SATA version, but not the mSATA. I will at least give it a shot and see I by a longshot should be so lucky the drive works for me. I read the entire thread you linked to and must say that although it looks a bit glum, the sheer size of the issues suggest there is a possibility there will be another bios version out sooner or later. Have you heard anything about the new M500s have the same issues?

Thanks for the comprehensive BIOS walk-though and links. (and no worries - I'll steer clear of the F.20 and F.30.)

 

TinyTurtle,

You might want to contact Crucial support and ask them the 000F firmware ISO for the mSATA Crucial M4 drives. Maybe they'll give it to you. They must have it. The ISO is not officially out because it was the first firmware for the mSATA drives, so any released ISO was with newer firmware than 000F.

07MH might work for you without any noticeable issues because we have to keep in mind: connected to the mSATA-ZIF adapter there are several things disabled (compared to a native mSATA slot):
1. AHCI disabled. The SSD is running in IDE compatibility mode. Because of this, it's slower
2. because of this, there's no NCQ and no hotswap capability
3. max speed is limited to about 80/65 MB/s read/write
4. the adapter might not enable slumber mode on the SSD, so it's keeping it idle or active all the time. It might be that a sudden power loss when the SSD is in slumber mode shocks the controller in slumber mode and that's why it disappears at boot on AHCI SATA PCs (as a measure of security).

A newer firmware than 07MH might be soon out. I don't know much about the newer M500 drives, I haven't tested one yet.
Also, in a few months we might see newer NGFF/M.2 - ZIF adapters for the new generation of SSDs in NGFF/M.2 format.

Please keep us informed if the 07MH firmware works well with the adapter under Windows 7 (if it passes TRIM correctly).

 

I installed it last night and haven't played around much with it yet. No errors so far though (knock on wood), but I'll post here if it disappears or anything else happen. Right now it's very snappy compared to what it was. My SierraWireless MC8775 is't working though - The HP Connection Manager keeps saying the device is disabled in the Device Manager, but when I check there the DM says it's working just fine.

cmd.exe as admin and "fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify" returns as "0" so it would appear TRIM is working, right?

 

if you do not plan to need the MC8775 I suggest removing it from notebook - as I did.
it makes at least with windows 7 here issues with sleep mode - 2510p does not enter sleep mode then in 1 of about 5 cases - it stays on with black screen, only powercut / on/off is possible - very annoying.
the provided driver from HP is from 2008, so I do not think they will fix it. :-/

>>>Cyber

 

I was really planning on using it.

The thing is that it used to work when the machine was on Vista Business (32bit) which is quite annoying. I don't really see myself going back to that...

The way Ms names the various power-saving modes (especially in Swedish) is confusing. How are they supposed to work and what's the error you mention? Is it that the machine just plain refuses to sleep? Just automatically or even when chosen in the Start menu?

 

Kryptex, sorry for taking so long to reply. My battery consumption floats between 700 and 1100, similar to yours. So, I think your calculations are correct and coherent with the numbers I get from the battery tool.

Regarding the MC8775, i also noticed this sleep problem in my notebook. But when I have some spare time, I'll install Win 7 32 (I'm currently on 64), and try some older drivers, including even WinXP drivers. Some XP drivers work ok on 32-bit versions on Win 7, so that may be a possibility to solve this problem.

BTW, did anyone (with a modded non-whitelist BIOS) ever try another WWAN card? I was thinking about getting one with GPS, but I have no idea if it would be useful. Are there drivers and good GPS software for Windows or Linux that we could use with a GPS enabled card installed on the 2510p??

 

be careful, the wwan slot is a USB mPCIe slot. so native mPCIe cards will not work.
the sleep problem: regardless if issuing sleep or hybernation, automatic or manually, I was always affected. the driver is originally from windows vista, there is no windows 7 driver available, I use windows 7 ultimate 32bit.
it does not refuse to go to sleep, it turns off monitor, then does nothing else. so you have to power off / power cut it, I found no way to get the screen back to be able to shut down.
its really annoying because just closing the notebook does not reliable switch it off. so you always have to wait ten seconds if it does or does not.

 

Any chance of adapting the mods/tweaks in this thread with the NC2400? They're somewhat related after all. Cousins, perhaps? They did miracles for the 2510p i got from my school.

I got a hold of a cheap NC2400 and fixed it up. It getting the msata SSD (32GB + msata-zif adapter) described earlier in the thread. Running a 160 gb caviar in the ODD bay atm. Strangely it completey refuses to work with an SSD in the same adapter, but whatever. Still twice as fast as the (competely wrecked) original 1.8" hdd

 

So the Marvell-based Fenvi caddy arrived...
I put a Momentus XT 500 GB drive inside (I removed the 1.8" drive) and the current draw at idle increased from about 1000 mA to 1500 mA, with respect to the stock 1.8" 120 GB Toshiba HDD. Otherwise it works well, the PC is almost as fast as with the mSATA SSD + mSATA-ZIF adapter.

It seems that in terms of power consumption a caddy + 7200 rpm 2.5" HDD is not the best idea after all. I'll change the HDD with a regular 2.5" SSD, let's see how it goes...

Edit: I rechecked and the current decreased to ~1000 mA, a tad bit higher than the 800 mA I measured for the stock 1.8" HDD. It seems that the Momentus XT drive was still quite active (learning) when I measured the 1500 mA currents at idle...

 

Hi Kryptex, I don't know if this is related, but I noticed the battery consumption shown in the battery utility is much higher in the first few minutes the notebook is on. After 10 or 15 minutes of idling, it dramatically decreases! Is my case, it was around 1100mA just after boot (OS loading finished, HD activity ceased), but went down to 700mA after 10 or 15 minutes. I have no idea why, perhaps power saving features playing their roles? Important to note screen was on all the time.

 

Yes, you are absolutely right ! I noticed the same thing: 1500 mA during the first 10 or so minutes of idling and then it decreases to 1000 mA without doing anything specific to the system (no standby or screen saver etc, just simple idle state).
I also noticed that when @ 1500 mA and if I do a manual standby and then get out of standby, the consumption decreases to about 1000-1200 mA. Quite strange indeed.

 

To continue my exploration concerning power consumption in the 2510p machine:
I've replaced the 1.8" stock drive with the mSATA-ZIF adapter + Samsung PM810 mSATA 128 GB SSD and the power consumption at idle is around 800 mA, similar to the 1.8" stock drive. In both cases I had the DVD drive also in its place.

 

Can i please new links for moded bios?

 

Send me a PM with your email address and I will send it to you, with pleasure.

 

I bought the mSATA drive Samsung SSD mSATA 32GB 6Gb/s MLC MZMPC032HBCD, and zif to msata adapter JM20330 chipset.

SSD Drive


Adapter


But when i try to instal windows on it then the installer does not detect the drive.
I'm doing something wrong or mayby drive or adapter are damaged???

 

Did you connect the ZIF cable to the ZIF-mSATA adapter correctly ? You must lift a thin plastic and connect correctly the ZIF cable below it (and then flip the plastic back over). The adapter should be placed with the JM20330 chipset facing toward you and on top of it the mSATA SSD.

When you start the laptop, press F9 and you should see, among other boot choices, the "Notebook hard drive" option. That's the ZIF drive...

 

Well zif cable is broken.

 

I had the same issue. Luckily I had a spare.

 

Today i bought new one, and now everythings works perfectly.

But something is wrong with the transfers, only about 10MB / s
It's r fault oft the adapter or ssd?

 

You didn't say anything about your OS, mobo drivers, what program are you testing with, a SSD SMART report, etc...

 

Running Flash videos overheats my Win7-64b 2510p to the point of it restarting itself - Could someone tell me which version of Adobe Flash Player was the last one that supported h/w accelerated playback on the 2510p? (Or if another version is the preferred choice of course)

 

Windows 7 PRO,alldriver from HP web site,testing by ASSDBenchmark.

 

dawzim,

From the SMART report, the SSD has 6 Ultra DMA CRC Errors. This means that there is a bad connection of the drive to you mobo. Did you correctly and firmly secured the ZIF cable to the ZIF-mSATA adapter and to the motherboard ? Did you correctly secured the mSATA SSD to the adapter with 2 proper screws ? Also, the whole adapter+SSD should not rattle inside the 1.8" bay. I use some thin sponge to secure it in place. Others use some hot glue to fix the adapter to the chassis. Anyway, be careful not to have an electrical shortcircuit somewhere in the 1.8" bay.

Also, you might want to Secure Erase (NOT the Enhanced version) the SSD with the latest Parted Magic ISO and reinstall/reimage your OS.

Another thing to be very careful about: Are your partitions 4K-aligned ? I recon you have Win XP.... You should align your partitions.

Can you provide an AS-SSD test snapshot, please ?

 

Everything is convected correctly, zif adapter is new.

 

You didn't reply to the rest of my inquires. Since you're so telegraphic, I can't help you anymore with this.
Regards.

 

I think that's enough.

 

Where's the AS-SSD bench showing the 10 MB/s sequentials ?

 

I took out my current ssd drive, and put the old one.
I will try to send the test results tomorrow

 

Famous last words?

 

I want use SAMSUNG mSATA SSD PM830/810 via the mSATA-ZIF adapter, It supoort trim.
But,I want use HDD PASSWORD in bios.protect my data.

or others mSATA SSD,M4...

 

my hp 2510p HDD 320G by a Caddy, Forcing Master or slave on the caddy (if there is no jumpers),,,Can i solder a jump in caddy PCBA??

 

I need help with a caddy that does not look like the eBay one on the first page. I tried the wire trick on both the second to the last pin on the top and bottom of the caddy (in case in was wrong on the positioning in the photo) and it didn't work.

Can someone tell me what pin I would need it to go to on this model? I opened up the top and bottom of the case and saw that the pins were numbered 1-25 on the top underneath the top cover and they were hidden on the bottom (but there are pins accessible from the front).

This is the caddy I bought: http://bit.ly/19luHDc

 

For some reason, both my strip of QuickLaunch at the top *and* the touchpad has stopped working and I can't seem to figure out why.

I'm using Win7-x64 and the QuickLaunch button drivers linked in the first post (SP45889.EXE) and at first both were working just fine. Then a while back the QL buttons stopped responding. They still light up when I press on them but nothing happens. Re-installing, uninstalling and installing again doesn't seem to help. I can launch the software and set up whick programs to launch and everything but the buttons don't do anything.

Then a week or so ago the touchpad stopped responding. It was working fine when I closed the lid and when I opened it a couple of hours later it wasn't. Drivers and settings seem to be working. I'm thinking that it's almost as if the QuickLaunch-button which disables the touchpad has been pressed, but since those aren't responding I can't reenable it there.

Does anybody have any suggestion on what to try? The little blue touchstick is working just fine btw.

 

I have had the same problem with the QL buttons a couple of times, and I think your diagnosis about the touchpad is probably right too. Unfortunately (and I'm sorry for this!) I can't remember exactly what I did to fix it. However, it wasn't hardware related.

I've got a feeling I might have got a fix from HP's own knowledge base. Have you looked on there?

Also, I see I have a later version of the QuickLaunch button drivers than yours - I have sp49104.exe (= version 6.50.17.1 dated 18 Jun 2010). Suggest you give that one a try; it's downloadable from HP's support pages. That might have been what fixed it for me.

 

Hi and thanks for your input!
I tried installing the 6.50.17.1 version you mentioned ( Link to it at HP if anyone else needs it) but the problem still persisted.

Hearing that you managed to fix it without replacing hardware was comforting so I took another look on the net and ended up on Microsoft's Win7 forums where someone suggested trying to turn the machine off, disconnect the power cable and remove the battery. I reconnected it five minutes later and booted up and lo and behold - The touchpad is working again!

 

Could someone please send me a link to the modded bios. PLEASE!!!

 

Could you please send me link to the modified bios?

 

Anyone who wants the modified BIOS, PM me with your email address.

Screw Nando, I will spread his precious work as much as I can!

 

Sorry but I don't know how to send private message. I'd like to please You send me these files (MODDED BIOS HP 2510p). I've got this notebook since few days and I'd like to tune it up but nowhere these files are downloadable. Thank You so much for help.