TZ Mega Upgrade!

Plan to install an Mtron 1.8" SSD this week as swap the Optical Drive for a 400GB WD Scorpio and swap the WWAN for a Broadcom MPEG2/VC1/H264 Decoder...

Probably on thursday or friday

 

Great. Don't forget to take a lot of pictures on each step of opening it, and post back here. Thanks.

 

Nice! I've just got a TZ a month ago and I'm itching to get a SSD in it. However I have to wait for the price of them to drop first. However, I've read on numerous sites that Mtron and indeed all other SSDs (they all use the J-micron controller) suffer from some stuttering problem when I/O activity becomes high. I think it was when copying /moving large amount of small files. However, the Intel SSDs, with their own controller doesnt suffer this problem.

Still, I would love to see you your mega upgrade. It would be more awesome if you consolidated all the guides floating around and write a consolidated one. I havent heard anything on the WWAN replacement. I'm not sure if the australian version even has WWAN, can some one confirm this? If its just a big empty hole, H264 Decoder will be so tempting.

 

I think someone has already posted how to open,I will just post the WWAN Replacement step...

 

having previously replaced/modified all the elements you mentioned. I'm curious what you manage to do with the wwan card. As you probably know it's a minipcie card on a daughter board which holds the sim card (or other circuitry for evdo). The point I'm trying to make is that I briefly checked if this meant I had an extra minipcie port in the laptop. So I put the wifi card in the place of the wwan card, and it did not get recognized at all. Is that how you are planning on installing your video encoder? let us know how it goes, I'm very interested in what you get.

j.

 

Yes that was it, wasn't sure if the wwan mini-pci-e slot was pinned for usb or usb & pci-e, but judging by yours results looks like usb to me... , the jap version had a tv tuner in place of the wwan, so maybe you just need to short a wire or something?

Got my SSD today, so will test, that broadcom decoder comes is expresscard version but their not shipping it to anyone, so could only get the internal one

Also any tips on removing the screw caps without scratching them?

 

After 7 Hours of work, SSD Installed and 400GB Hard Driver, swapped Decoder card with Wifi but couldn't get it working so removed, note when opening aTZ place masking tap eall over the casing, top, bottom and some paper or clear film taped across the screen to protect it, this way if the screwdriver slips it won'tget scratched, anyway got it back together but two small scratches on palm rest, and power connector hinge cover does not fit on properly...

 

Congrats on the SSD and HDD install! It must be awesome performance wise now. However, I was hoping you can get the Decoder card to work. So you tried card in both the Wifi and WWLAN ports? I was going through my system hardware readouts in Everest and I saw that there are 4 PCI-E ports supported by the south bridge. Port 1 is the Marvell Yukon Ethernet adapter. Port 2 is the Intel Wifi card. Port 3 & 4 are free. Assuming that the Decoder is a pci-e interface, its strange it doesnt work? Did you reset the bios by any change? There was a thread on some one doing the dvd to HDD conversion and it wasnt recognised until they reseted the bios.

Still its awesome to have SSD, I'll have to wait a year or so, both for my 1yr warranty to expire and also the price of SSDs to drop.

 

yeah, I would expect it to work in the wifi spot. Indeed resetting the BIOS seems to be needed for a lot of hardware changes. If you feel like going back in there, that might work. Just so you know, you don't need to remove the hinge covers to get the keyboard off. I find i risk less damage by flexing the keyboard a little bit, just enough that you can pry one side out of one hinge cover (it just needs to move about 1.5mm). Regarding the TV tuner, I'm quite sure it works on a different daughter board. But there are dip switches on my wwan daughter card (which presumable allow you to pick EVDO or HSDPA), but maybe could also let the board be use as a neutral pcie port.

 

Silly question but what is the Broadcom MPEG2/VC1/H264 Decoder for? It's a TV tuner?? How good is the signal, I take it that it uses the same sort of antenna as the wifi card would.

 

NO TV Tuner, but you can fit an internal one though, didn't try the WWAN replacement, but don't see why it wouldn't work, as for the hinges yes you can flex them, but if your going to openit 4 time then easier to take them off, I tried to flex one but didn't work....

 

quick question, how many pci-e slots are on the TZ? For someone with, WWLAN, Wifi, Ethernet and TV Tuner, there must be 4 slots. I have to keep that in mind when its time to open up the TZ.

 

The TV tuner is used is Japan over here we get the WWAN installed instead, uses same slot, but there is one standard mini PCI-E used for wifi card and the WWAN/TV Tuner one, but mini PCI-E slots are pinned for both USB and PCI-E protocols, the WWAN slot might only be pinned for USB, so two slots in all, and the express card slot which is essentially a mini PCI-E but with connection for external devices, wonder if there is an mini PCI-e to Expresscard adapter as mini PCI-E cards are small enough to fit into the slot..

Not sure if you can replace the WWAN with a different mini pci-e card sony may of locked it down in the BIOS, didn't want to remove it and check...

but it's possible it may work with other cards, you could add an internal DVB-T tuner as there is a removable cap on the side of the case where you can install the antenna connector

 

Thanks for the info. I will definitely keep it in mind when I open my TZ up!

 

I wouldn't be surprised if many expresscards had minipcie cards inside, thereby making them de facto adapters... At least that was the case with many wwan USB sticks.

Regarding the flexing. I can safely say that flexing the whole keyboard to reduce it's length and allow the hinge to pop out is much gentler for multiple openings than removing the cylindrical covers of the hinges, which, if done repeatedly, end up looser. Now, if you know that you're going to go in and out for a bit, sure, leave a cover off...

there is a difference between physical minipcie ports, and mini-pcie slots on the bridge. As for actual ports, there is only one, the one used for the wifi card, easily user replaceable. Then there is the expresscard port which can certainly be used in conjunction with many cards that could otherwise live in a minipcie format. Then there is a crippled minipcie port, which only works through the use of a daughter board, which, as far as I can tell is different for wwan or for the japanese TV tuner (which, in fact, might not even be a minipcie card on a daughterboard, but just a dedicated daughterboard). The ethernet port is a beautifully soldered un-shielded twisted cable crossing the mobo.

I still would very much want to know if the codec card can work in the wifi spot. one of the reasons is that high def video, and bluray for example, is a limitation with this chipset, unlike on the TT, but with this, you could potentially put in the TTs bluray drive and have it work. Still lacking an HDMI out though, but it might come for the expresscard slot...I know, why not buy a TT?

 

The decoder card worked in place of the wifi but I installed the driver got sound no video, cpu usage for 720P H264 dropped from 60 to 20 percent, anyway I am having trouble installing a clean copy of vista, the WWAN card is not shown under device manager and some of stuff has no drivers for them, hate that sony cripple the whole system so you can't do what ypu wt with it, the restore cd's will not restore the OS to my SSD, defaults to the 400GB Drive.

Anyway I ran the restore cd from windows and there is an option to restore programs and drivers, so hoping it fixes alll the issues

 

Hmm I've found a mention of a BroadCom HD decoder in ExpressCard format.

I cant seem to post URL but if you put

"BroadCom HD Video & Audio Decoder ExpressCard 34" in google, its the first link.

But in a way that is still bad as the expresscard will stick out. Also, I think with a little tinkering you can probably get the pci-e HD decoder to work. However, as j mentioned that there is only ONE physical pci-e port, it would mean sacrificing the WLAN for HD decoder, an unworthy trade off.

If only they made minipci-e to expresscard adaptors, that would be interesting to tryout.

rex.