racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

During a what-was-i-thinking moment a couple of weeks ago, I was considering selling my trusty Compaq Presario V2617, possibly to finance an upgrade. I posted on TPC I had a lot of offers for the price (I got dozens of inquiries per day), but I ended up deciding not to sell instead.

And it was a good thing. Just the week after, I noticed my laptop was overheating. First, I got a creaking sound when the fan turned, and then I noticed the fan had not been turning at all. The CPU’s thermal protection then shut off the power whenever the processor got too hot.

And then I realized that the warranty was expiring July 3rd. So the day before, I rushed to MSI-ECS (official distributor and service center of HP) in nearby Libis to have the laptop services. My main complaint was the defective fan, but I told the technicians that they can feel free to replace whatever part needed replacing. I told them I noticed the LCD was a bit loose and was already dim. I also asked if they could replace the palm rest because the paint was faded, and the right speaker grill had some rust.

I had a pleasant surprise when I picked up the laptop yesterday. I was told the LCD and front bezel were replaced. I didn’t realize I would have a significant improvement over my laptop’s original state.

HP Compaq really made me happy this time.

My laptop looked almost new because of the new front bezel. Well, that’s except for the keyboard (which is in need of some good cleaning) and the the area near the hinges. So now the palm rest is pristine, and the touchpad and the clickers are also very smooth (no oil marks nor faded parts). Basically it’s like first using the laptop straight off the box.

But an even more pleasant surprise is the LCD. Not only was it twice as bright as my old one (at least to my perception), the entire lid had been replaced (probably easier than having to disassemble everything). And with this new lid came—guess what—WiFi antennae! I discovered this when I opened up the memory and mini PCI slots to check if maybe—just maybe—they upgraded the lid to the one with antennae. And they did!

The original V2617TS did not come with wireless antennas at the back, so that severely limited one’s wireless connectivity options to external/plug-in devices like Cardbus and USB.

Now that I had antennae, all I needed was a mini PCI card. I tried the one I stuck into my dad’s Neo (generic) laptop, just to see whether the BIOS now accepted it (apparently, the technicians upgraded or at least reinstalled the BIOS since the startup screen looked different). Nope. I was still getting the 104 “Unsupported wireless device” errors, so the computer wouldn’t boot. I could theoretically hack either the BIOS or the card’s firmware so that the BIOS would think the device was in its whitelist, but I was afraid of bricking my laptop.

So I scoured the online forums for mini PCI cards, and I came across a fellow TPCer I had dealt with several times over the past couple of years already. He does carry a wide array of spare mini PCI cards pulled out from old/defective laptops, and I thought there might be a chance he had a compatible one. HP/Compaq laptops have very strict whitelists (due to FCC restritions). I read this being an Intel, it would only accept Intel wireless chips made for HP particularly (AMD based ones use Broadcom chips made for HP specifically).

Over at Hottoyzph, After trying on a couple of mini PCI cards (all with 104 errors), we chanced upon one Intel Pro 2200BG that worked. The moment the computer went past the POST screen and booted up, I felt excited. Now I had internal WiFi. The added cost was minimal for an internal WiFi card.

So a year and a week after buying my Compaq Presario V2617TS, I got myself a mostly-new V2617 with several upgrades (I actually purchased a DVD-RW drive before, for backing up files and photos). It’s better than good as new .

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