Samsung NC10 owner Graeme wanted to add a  Broadcom HD decoder card for 1080p HD playback but only had one PCI-e slot in his netbook, and it was already occupied by his wireless card.  Not wanting to give up WIFI, or settle for a USB wireless card, Graeme took a soldering iron to the NC10 and added a second slot.

His efforts were helped by the fact that the NC10’s mainboard already had the holes and wiring for a second PCI-e port, which for some reason, Samsung didn’t utilize. He overcame the fact that the NC10 BIOS wasn’t equipped for a  second PCI-e device, not to mention having to solder each of those tiny pins in place, but in the end everything worked as Graeme hoped.

[via EEE-PC.de]

DIY HP Mini 1000 Tablet

Timm McCoy, over at the MyHPMini forums has started a DIY HP Mini 1000 tablet project.  He has taken apart his HP Mini 1000 netbook, tweaked a few wires and moved some components as well as flipping over the screen already.  He says the next steps are to install a touchscreen kit, and re-install the original LCD screen cover, but with a big rectangular hole it it.

Nice work Timm – we’re excited to see how it goes.

See a video of the progress so far after the break.

DIY Acer Aspire One 1080p edition

Over at Terracode, they’ve done some major work to incorporate Broadcom’s HD Accelerator mini PCI-e card (model BCM70012) into the Acer Aspire one.  There were two options to install the external graphics accelerator, either older on a mini pci-e connector into the existing traces on the motherboard or remove the 802.11g Wi-Fi card from it’s mini PCI-e slot and install it there.  Initially, soldering was attempted, but after a botched attempt (due to the tiny traces on the motherboard), the Broadcom card was slotted into the Wi-Fi card’s place.  That necessitates the use of a US B Wi-FI card, but they though it was worth it to see how the HD ugprade would perform.  While they were at it, they also upgraded the HD to a Kingston ssdNow V series 64 GB SATA solid state drive and upped the RAM from 1gb to 2gb.

Performance wise the upgrade was a success.  By installing the  mini PCI-e card video decoding and scaling was off-loaded from teh processor onto the new graphics processor (Broadcom PCIe card).  That reducedthe load on the CPU and allows full screen smooth 1080P playback. You may be thinking, what good is 1080p resolution on a netbook screen, and you would be right.  The guys used an external monitor, capable of 1920×1080 pixels vs. the Acer’s 1024×600 pixel screen.

Read on for side by side video performance comparisons and a cost breakdown.

Project Cost Breakdown (in US dollars)

• Acer AOA150-1706: $259.00 on sale
• Broadcom BCM70012: $40.00 (EBay)
• Kingston SNV-125-S2BD/64GB: $129.00 on sale
• 1 GB DDR2-5300 DIMM: $14

Total cost $442.00. The cost of a similarly equipped HP Mini 110 XP is $444.00 (32 GB SSD and 1 GB memory).

Add a touch panel to your Aspire One.

The Acer Aspire One, despite all the latest and greatest such as the 1008HA from Asus, still a great netbook. As reviewed here at Netbooks Heaven, it has the familiar and still mostly up to date specs of a 1.6ghz Atom processor, 6 cell battery, 1gb ram and 160gb hard drive.

You can, however, set your Aspire One apart from the crowd, and add some useful functionality by replacing the regular LED backlit LCD screen with a touchscreen.  The parts are easily available on eBay for less than 60 quid and there are many detailed guides available online.

Read past the break for a full how-to video guide on adding a touchscreen to your Aspire One netbook.

Step One – Dissambly of the netbook.

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Step Two – Hardware Installation

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Step Three – Driver Installation and Testing

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- A full guide, with pictures at AspireOneUser.com.

- Liliputing on adding a touchsreen to your Aspire One Netbook.

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