Elitebook owners- questions about 6930p

[wirednuts]

I just bought used one for $80! add battery, ac adapter and hdd and I have a fully working laptop!

couple of questions that are odd to me.

first, wifi is working, but there is no wifi adapter installed? I open the bay underneath, and the wifi antenna wires are just sitting there with no card installed, but the laptop claims to have an intel 5300 in it- and it works great!

it is a Centrino laptop, so maybe that's it? does this mean its possible to have two wifi adapters?

does this have a place inside for a discreet video card? I can see that this model did have that option, but is it on all 6930p's? or is it only on certain motherboards? even if I could, im not sure if I would but I just want to know. the 4500hd isn't terrible...

also, the power cord is 3 wire. two power leads and some sort of small signal wire that goes to the little center pin. what does this wire do? is it to distinguish what charger is plugged in? (I cut my adapter because it wasn't charging... but its working now.. suddenly...)

are any of the HP bloatware apps worth it? like the business card scanner?

 

[wirednuts]

well, I answered my power question. stupid charger I bought was broke! after more troubleshooting, I could only think that the cord itself was broken internally. I cut the end off, and opened the barrel with a knife. the center wire was broke off the solder lug!

that wire needs to see 5-6v. if it is less, the laptop wont charge. if its more, the laptop will charge but the processor speed will be reduced to 10% by the BIOS automatically. so you cant just short the center pin to the inner ring, you need to use a stepdown fet.

so, I just cleaned the barrel off and soldered the wires back onto it. little heatshrink, stuffed with hot glue, then more heatshink on top of that. good as new. works a treat.

this laptop is kick ass! i cant say enough... i finally own a well designed and rugged laptop. its feels faster then my i3 htpc with twice the ram too!

 

[TerryMathews]

I just bought used one for $80! add battery, ac adapter and hdd and I have a fully working laptop!

couple of questions that are odd to me.

first, wifi is working, but there is no wifi adapter installed? I open the bay underneath, and the wifi antenna wires are just sitting there with no card installed, but the laptop claims to have an intel 5300 in it- and it works great!

it is a Centrino laptop, so maybe that's it? does this mean its possible to have two wifi adapters?

does this have a place inside for a discreet video card? I can see that this model did have that option, but is it on all 6930p's? or is it only on certain motherboards? even if I could, im not sure if I would but I just want to know. the 4500hd isn't terrible...

also, the power cord is 3 wire. two power leads and some sort of small signal wire that goes to the little center pin. what does this wire do? is it to distinguish what charger is plugged in? (I cut my adapter because it wasn't charging... but its working now.. suddenly...)

are any of the HP bloatware apps worth it? like the business card scanner?

You're not looking at the WLAN slot, you're looking at the WWAN slot. Elitebooks generally have an option for a cellular WWAN modem.

The only HP software I install that doesn't come from WindowsUpdate is Protect Tools to drive the fingerprint reader. Not all Elitebooks have them though.

To your question about graphics, a quick search shows that there appears to be two variations of the motherboard, one with Intel graphics and one with Ati.

You'd be better off to sell and rebuy than to try and retrofit motherboards.

Enjoy that Elitebook. I believe they are some of the best laptops on the market - we now have 3.

 

[wirednuts]

thanks! i have done a lot of research on these things. i understand everything now.

a bummer is i updated my bios! i shouldnt have done that, because i could have flashed a modified one to allow any wwan card i want. oh well.

im in love with this thing! it so well built.. its a real machine. i think im going to start collecting these and fixing them up. i just saw one yesterday for $120- it had the t9400 in it, with ati graphics. all it needed was a harddrive.

even the 8440p's go for $300, and thats with an i5 cpu. you just cant beat these right now for the value of what you get.