[Tfug] Why EVERYTHING is a learning experience :)

[Jim March]

Today's coke spill on my Acer laptop at Buddy's turns out to be an
interesting and low-cost learning experience.

I flipped it over right away, managed a shutdown in Ubuntu, pulled
power and battery and then wiped it down.  Left it to dry upside down.

After a few hours at home, I carefully stripped everything and found
that almost all the drink stayed in the keyboard.  I got it clear of
everyplace else, washed the keyboard, let dry some more, re-assembled.

I'm typing this on it :).

Only one problem: the inboard WiFi adapter is fried.  I'm up using
Ethernet straight from my router.

Sigh.  OK, could be worse, right?

The card was an Atheros which works pretty good but isn't perfect in
Linux ("binary blob" driver of iffy reliability).  Turns out the card
is a mini-PCI.

Did some digging.  I will NOT be putting another mini-PCI card in, no
way in hell.  Why?  Because it turns out there are a buttload of other
things you can do with it - why waste it on WiFi?

:)

Check THIS out:

http://www.globalamericaninc.com/other/mini_PCI_&_AGP.php

Holy crap!  Let's see, we have a mini-PCI SATA *raid* controller(!),
we've got dual gigabit ethernet controller, we've got improved
audio(!) - what's in my Asus flat sucks wind.  We've got an entire
low-end video card with 8megs RAM and a CRT cable included (gotta look
up the chipset of course).  And for the crem-de-la-oh-my-GOD we've got
an adapter and 11-inch cable to a pair of full-tilt PCI cards, one
3.3v and one 5v.  Can you picture an NVidia card in one?  I sure as
hell can.  Maybe one in each...

Oh yeah.  We bad.  Throw a custom plug into the access door to the
mini-PCI area...

---

This leads to a question: what do I do for WiFi?  PCMCIA comes to
mind, or maybe USB.  There's a shitload of choices either way, for
under $40.  Not that I need it right away of course...

So.  If it hadn't been for the coke spill...I'd never have known I've
got a muthafrackin' honest to dog EXPANSION SLOT!!!  TEH BADNESS!

True, the laptop might not have enough power to drive one external PCI
and definitely not two, but...the PCI pinouts are well known, splice
in a small ATX desktop power supply to the dual-card board and snip
the power lines to the mini-PCI card, good to go, it'll all fit in the
custom case it would clearly need to one side of te "laptop"...

:)

Jim