Upgraded Acer 3680 Celeron CPU to a T5300!

[kike05]

Revisé la guía de CPU, lo cual es excelente, pero todavía tengo que preguntar: ¿seré capaz de reemplazar a un Celeron M 410 con un T5200 en un TravelMate 2441, el chipset es ATI Xpress 200 tengo la intención de comprar?

[kike05]

I looked over the CPU guide, which is excellent, but I still have to ask: will I be able to replace an M 410 Celeron with a T5200 in a travelmate 2441, the chipset xpress 200M I'm planning to buy?

[benvanderjagt]

Hi, I believe it will work. I've installed Core 2 Duo's on Toshiba's with the ATi Xpress 200m chipset. I can't guarantee anything, but the chipset is ready. It will mainly come down to whether the BIOS supports it.

[dancoopermedia]

Hi -- I'm running the live Ubuntu CD on my Acer, which has not yet been upgraded, and it's certainly a breath of fresh air. The keyboard problem has gone away. The space bar was a real problem before -- now, not a problem. Would you advise installing Ubuntu alongside of Vista? Or under Vista? Or to hell with Vista on my notebook?

[benvanderjagt]

Well, as for me, I dove into Linux head-first in 2002. I completely replaced Windows with Linux and was 100% migrated in less than a month, and I never looked back. I've been very happy with these Acer's with Linux, especially in performance.

I myself will sometimes install Windows on my own laptops, in case I find myself in a pinch where I require Windows. (Of course, I can't remember any time that happened.) Since I use Windows very little, I just make a small partition for it. For most of my clients, I recommend using all but about 20GB of the hard drive for Windows and installing Linux in that 20GB. The reason I say that is that Linux has no problem reading and writing Windows filesystems, so if you simply keep the bulk of your larger files and documents in the Windows partition, you'll always be able to access them.

If you want Windows, I suggest installing Windows, then installing Linux from the installation disc and not from inside of Windows. It would probably work, but there have been occasional bootloader problems when using that method. Since you have no problem starting up and running the live CD, you'll probably have no problem installing from the CD.

Remember, backup early, backup often.

[dancoopermedia]

So I'm ready to put in the new processor and new memory. The video referred to in the first post is of no help in that the guy moves so fast it's impossible to tell what he's doing. Does anyone know of step by step instructions on opening up the 3680 and putting in the components?

[benvanderjagt]

I don't know of any step-by-step instructions, but I can give you the quick rundown from memory.

1: Take off the large memory cover
2: Unhook the WiFi antennas, modem, microphone, and speakers. (There are five connectors there, one of which is the CPU fan. It's fine to just unhook everything you see there.)
3: Remove the three screws from the back (two for the hinge covers, one close to a hinge
4: Open the screen all the way.
5: Grab the right edge of the strip of plastic that covers the hinges, power button, and quick launch buttons, and pull upwards. It should remove the entire strip pretty easily.
6: Remove the two screws holding the keyboard down, and pull up on the keyboard (around the F8 key) until it pops up easily. Then flip the tiny plastic latch that holds the ribbon cable onto the motherboard.
7: Find where the WiFi antenna wires pass through the middle of the chassis under the keyboard, and pull them back up and remove them from the rest of the chassis.
8: Unhook the screen from the motherboard. (Be careful, since it's made of tiny wires. It usually is pretty easy to pull straight out, but sometimes it gets stuck.)
7: Close the screen (carefully so as not to smash the cable against the screen), and remove the four hinge screws.
8: Open the screen again, and it should simply come all the way off
9: Remove the three screws under the keyboard.
10: Disconnect the touchpad (with a similar connector to the keyboard)
11: Flip the laptop over, remove the hard drive cover, hard drive, and short wide-headed chrome plated screw under it.
12: Remove all of the black screws from around the edges. (There's a silver screw in the hard drive compartment that does -not- need to be removed. It reinforces the edge of the chassis.)
13: Flip the laptop over again, unhook the lid switch (near where the power button is), and lift the top of the chassis starting from the right side. It tends to hang a little near the S-Video connector, but turning the chassis top a tiny bit while lifting it will usually free it right up.
14: Remove the two more black screws that hold the motherboard down to the bottom of the chassis. Grab the right edge of the motherboard, and lift it out, raising the back up first.
15: Flip the motherboard over, and remove the six screws that hold the CPU fan assembly. (Watch that the plastic washers don't get lost. They usually stay on the screws, but they sometimes do fall off. They need to be put back on if they fall off, otherwise the heatsink will not be flat on the CPU when you put it back together.

As they say in car manuals, "Reassembly is the opposite of disassembly," but these are the most helpful tips I can give:

The screws are almost all the same, except there's a short screw holding the hard drive chassis in, there are two screws holding the keyboard down, there's a short wide chrome screw under the hard drive, and the hinges have round-headed screws.

When handling the motherboard, be careful not to put stress on the corner with the power board.

When reinserting the motherboard into the chassis, gently hold the WiFi and BlueTooth switches to the right while inserting the motherboard starting at that exact point. So often, people miss this part, and then they put the whole thing together, only to get frustrated with switches that don't work. Rather than disassembling and reassembling, people then tend to force the switches, and they break. -IF- this happens, you can either use Linux, which can send the "ifconfig wlan0 up" command to the wireless card, or you can use the Acer Empowering Whatever-It's-Called to enable the card.

When putting the top of the chassis back on the motherboard, start from the S-Video connector area. This will make things much easier...

After doing this whole thing one time, you'll probably feel confident enough to do it all again whenever you feel like. It's a really pretty nice design that doesn't use silly plastic locks, double-stick tape, melted plastic rivets, tons of cables, or boards that need to be twisted to put into place. If you're like me, you'll probably find yourself disassembling and reassembling 3680's a lot, and the most annoying part is when you've done it too quickly and have reassesmbled it 90% of the way, only to realize that you forgot to run the WiFi antenna cables under the keyboard. q-: I've done that plenty of times.

[C-DOG]

I've got a 3680-2633 with the right chipset and am planning to use t-7200, OCZ vertex ssd, 4g ram. Question is has anybody used Windows 7 64 bit? Any problems?

[benvanderjagt]

Hi, my brother put Windows 7 64-Bit on his Acer 3680, and he's having no trouble at all. One problem, though, is that your motherboard will almost certainly not support 4GB of RAM. 2GB (theoretically 2.5GB) is the typical max for Acer 3680's. If your SSD has good caching, then 2GB of RAM will still run quite well. If you still need more speed and find that RAM is your bottleneck, then adding a ReadyBoost compliant flash device will probably do the trick. (If you want to be stealth about it and don't mind doing some SMT soldering, you can usually disassemble the flash drive, hide it under the power board, and hook it up to the Webcam jack. If you need pinouts for this, let me know.)

[ellalan]

Very interesting thread, I was reading the posts(about 30 pages so far), I could go on for a few days. I stumbled upon a very expensive processor and would like to share with you all. Thanks to all contributed, well done.