Bought a D500P. Battery, parts questions.

Yes. I know it's old. Spent 250 Euros on it 8 months ago.

I have some questions about it, and would like to know what keywords bring it up in this forum. First some background on it:

Bought it from a guy from the UK. Doesn't have a DE keyboard and I wish I could swap it out for one.

Battery is dead, lasts for about 5 minutes. Secondary battery isn't there: I wish it was. Anyone open up the ultrasonically-welded main battery and replace the cells?

Internal cooling fins were clogged with cat dander. See below..

Bought it because a neighbor bought one 7 years ago and liked it.

I took the whole thing apart and had it apart for over a month waiting for the screen bracket. Although I am in Germany, it is totally useless to contact Clevo in either English or German, in their 'European Office', as I get the impression they only speak Chinese effectively.

Replaced the LH bracket with a 30$ one purchased from the U.S. Was alot of $ after Clevo Germany (EU) quoted me 10€; but like I said, communicating with them to place an order was a completely useless exercise. Recalibrated the hinges to hold about 600-700 grams apiece. This stops the replacement bracket from breaking.

I replaced the WIFI card too, an Intersil 3880 Hardmac MiniPCI, with an Atheros 5005xx (B/G/SuperG), for about 10€ plus shipping. Can't get the Bluetooth module to work, but that may be an XP software problem.

Replaced the crappy Toshiba DVD ROM CD-RW drive with the real deal, a LG HL-DT-ST GSA-T40N, everything but bluray and lightscribe. About 44€.

Overall, happy with it. Don't have the money to blow on a new laptop - my other laptop is an upgraded Compaq Armada 1750!

I run MaxFan to kick the fan to max speed if I'm doing some kind of CPU intense operation. My main complaint is the fan intake is on the bottom: how stupid can a laptop designer be, while seemingly getting other aspects correct? I'll have a local machine shop fab an ALU platter like the ThermalTake T3000, as the T3000 is not available in Mainland Europe.

Any tips, tricks, or threads I should know about?

Any chance I can get the secondary battery housing?: I'd replace the cells myself. Someone here must have a dead one lying around.

I am going to put a Samsung 3yr HM160HC drive in here next, as I ran out of room today on the internal Hitachi OEM. BTW, Thanks to thread #264209, what brought me here. I was searching for SATA-PATA adapters for 2.5", and thanks to the helpful people on the forum, I'll be spending 52€ instead, for the fastest, most efficient, PATA 160GB drive.

 

Welcome to the NBR forums.

Wow, thats a mouth full.

firstly, you can almost contact any Clevo vendor in Europe and they should be able to help you and point you to the right direction to get replacement parts (keyboard, battery, etc...).

secondly, the fan intake is designed on over 95% of all notebooks, thats how it it. Intake from the bottom, exhausts to the back/side. As long you you do not block the bottom fans/vents, the cooling should not be an issue. Only use it on a clean, hard, flat surface.

lastly, glad to hear you put all that work into it to make it functional.

 

D500P was sold in the US as a Sager np5680, and it shared the same body with the np5690 and I think the NP5670. It sold in Canada as the Eurocom D500P Monte Carlo.

Other than the hinge issue, it was a well-regarded beast of a laptop in its day--so much so it is actually still functional. Indeed, I am still using it more than 5 years after buying loaded with a measely 1gb of ram and it runs Vista surprisingly well.

Over the years, other than the hinges, I have only had a couple of issues--adding memory was tricky as most ram I could find was 2.6volt and this model wanted 2.5volt ram. Then there was the hinges. I also replaced the original 60gb drive with a larger one.

As for the battery, mine lasts about 5 minutes nowadays, too. I usually use the battery to start the computer while I am looking for a plug--other than that, not much use. replacement batteries can be had for about $100, but I am subconsciously trying to destroy this laptop so I can buy a new one (seriously, after 5 years of babying this thing to death, including opening it up and cleaning it out every 6 months or so, I've left this thing on my front seat while driving twice in the last two weeks, hit the brakes and bounced it off the dashboard, but the darn thing keeps working so i cannot justify a new one)

 

@Gophn, GarryF19

Thanks for the info. If there are any more people out there with critical info, or where I can get the parts I mention, please post!

Thanks

 

I also have been babying mine for 5 years.

So 2.5 volt ram is the only kind I can use on my sager np5680? I was thinking about upgrading the ram in the next week from 1gig to 2.

I've had a couple of problems with mine as well including my post recent PCMCIA slot breaking. Doesn't seem to hold a connection when pressure is applied anywhere near it. I just received an internal mini pci card which seems to be working just fine as a replacement to the pcmcia wireless card.

My battery is crapping out on me again too. Doesn't seem to last more than 30 minutes. I've been using batteryrefill.com but their battery cells don't seem to last more than 3 months before degrading.

Where have you found a 100$ replacement battery? I've found a few from hong kong on ebay but am a bit hesitant to purchase these.

 

there is a BatteriesPlus near my home and they said they could order one for about $100-$110

Sager has one for $145
http://www.sagernotebook.com/product.php?pid=418&xcSID=b8bccmu2uo0ard2h6kk859i295

 

I wonder how long the battery from sager has been sitting on their shelf. $160 with shipping to get a battery that won't last much longer than an hour :[

Maybe I will try the battriesplus or get one from ebay.

 

What are the keywords for the ebay battery? And has anyone found the second battery? Even a second battery housing would be okay - I think the cells can be replaced.

 

clevo d500p will turn them up. Running $120 this morning

 

found one for 96 bucks

 

:smile:

Good find

 

Do you want to tell me where? and was this the secondary battery, or just another primary? I can rebuild my primary; I look for a shell for the secondary.