Tinker tinker tinker

[BaldEagl]

I thought I'd share a little of what's been keeping me occupied for the past month or two.  The most interesting part of this is at the end so don't give up early.   

As many of you know, I have this old Sony Vaio laptop.  It had a 650 Mhz PIII, 128 Mb PC100 SDRAM, 8 Mb onboard video RAM and an 11 Gb hard drive with Win98.  I was thinking about buying a new one but couldn't find one for under $450 so I started pricing out some parts for the old one.  I upgraded the RAM to 256 Mb, the most the mobo would accept, then pulled the thing apart (I had to remove the power switch panal and keyboard) and upgraded the hard drive to 120 Gb with two 60 Gb partitions.  Then I got ahold of a set of Vaio recovery CD's which I had never had and did a clean install of XP Home and selectivly re-installed some of the Sony applications.  Wow.  What a nice refresh for an aging laptop!

Well, that all went so well I decided to replace the dead battery (original circa 2000) with a new one and regained mobility.  I also learned along the way that if you drain your battery to 50% and store it in the refrigerator when not in use you can add up to two years to it's life.

Then I was browsing newegg and spotted a USB powered hard drive enclosure.  It looked pretty handy for back-up, data transfer and file mobility so I picked it up and also ordered a 60 Gb laptop HD off the net to stick inside it.  Another nice addition.

Well, one night I was on youtube listening to music and thought man, these laptop speakers suck so I went back to newegg where I found a set of USP powered external speakers (Logitech) and bought them.  The best part is they come with their own case and the whole thing fits neatly within my laptop case.  They're not audiophile quality but a nice bump from the laptop's internals.

In the end, not counting the external drive or the speakers which I can use with a future machine (yes, that's my justification), the upgrades (including memory, drive, battery, OS, and recovery discs) ran about half what the cheapest new machine would have and this thing works great now.  I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Here's a picture of it set up with everything attached in my kitchen where I use it most often:



So, at this point I got to listening to music more often again as I work around the kitchen.  The laptop is grabbing files off my old Dell across the house.  I've also been meaning to start ripping my CD collection (somewhere over 2000 CD's) so I started thinking about turning the old Dell into a network file server.  I calculated that I'd need somewhere between 200-300 Gb of drive space to do this but only had a 120 Gb and a 60 Gb drive in the Dell plus a 13 Gb external.  After much study and thought, I decided to go with a Dual Boot Win98SE (20Gb)/XP Pro (60 Gb) with an extra 120 Gb storage partition on the 200 Gb Seagate IDE drive that was in my new gaming machine then swap my 120 Gb internal drive to storage and replace the 13 Gb external with another 120 Gb, limiting all the drives to 120 Gb to accomodate 98SE.  I had to have a 98 boot partition to run my old Cannon SCSI flatbed scanner, which, in their infinite wisdom, Cannon never updated the drivers for XP.

Since I was going to be installing XP I started thinking some more RAM and a faster CPU might be nice too.  I bought two 256 Mb chips of PC100 SDRAM to replace the two 128 Mb chips that were in the system and, along with the 256 Mb chip already there I would go from 512 Mb to 768 Mb, the most the mobo would accept.  Of course, to make this run with 98SE I knew I'd have to limit it to 512 Mb for the 98 OS but I found out there's a setting in the device manager to allow this.

During all of this I was periodically searching ebay for an upgrade to my 600 Mb CPU and one day I stumbled on a 1.2 Ghz Intel Tualatin PIII in a Powerleap slocket adapter and it was the right one for my 100 Mhz bus so I snagged it for about $30.

Then I started thinking that my music collection plus documents, pictures, etc. were going to eat up all of the drive space on the Dell leaving me no room for backing up any files.  I was also going to have to take the 200 Gb Seagate out of my new machine to use in the Dell so I started thinking replacement.  This got me to thinking about network storage as a whole and I picked up a second Seagate 250 Gb AS series SATA drive for local storage on the new machine and a pair of Seagate NS series 500 Gb SATA drives to place in the new machine for network back-up duties.

Now, since I was going to be tearing into both my desktops and having seen TilDeath's builds, I thought I'd also take the opportunity to re-wire both boxes.

I started with the Dell.  I didn't have much to work with here because there's no mobo riser (i.e. no way to route cabling between the side panal and the mobo tray) so what I saw was what I had to work with.

Here's a pic of the Dell re-wired with the new CPU, RAM, HD's and a new GPU cooler (mine was making noise) installed.  I really needed shorter IDE cables.  Well, another project for another day:



OK, not so great but I didn't have a lot to work with.  The old tired Dell is SO MUCH faster now I can hardly describe it.  This thing has been a workhorse for 10 years and I'm betting it's got another 5 or more left in it.

Here's a pic of it finished and transferring 60 Gb of files off the external drive (on the lower shelf of the cart next to the local printer):



So then I started the new machine.  I only had to drill one hole for the exhast fan cable and there were also some slots in the upper drive bays I connected.  I drilled between them, then bent the remainig metal back and forth untill in broke off.  Then I reemed it with a file and finally filed all the edges smooth to get my SATA, Molex and 6 pin cables through between the side panal and the drive bays.

Here's a pic of the new machine re-wired with the new drives installed.  :



Here's more detail of the hard drive bays:



And more detail up the upper portion of the case:



And finally, here it is all set up (where I spend WAY too much time )



I've still got a buch of tweaking to do but the hard parts are over.  Each machine took me 10 minutes.     Now the file organization and ripping of my collection can start.   

As a bonus I also learned a lot of new stuff along the way as I planned and executed this.

[llama]

WTG on a lot of upgrades.

But about the phrase: "I was thinking about buying a new one (laptop) but couldn't find one for under $450"

I can see you not wanting a netbook for various reasons (the biggest reason being the sceen, but even a netbook would be faster and have more RAM than your upgraded notebook for around $350, and have 5 or 6 hours of battery life besides), but two minutes on the Dell website and I found the Dell Vostro A860 Laptop, which has:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5470 (1.6GHz CPU), Vista (Ugh!), 2GB ram, DVD burner, 160GB hard drive, built-in WiFi, a 15.6" widescreen display, and a warranty.

All for $419.

I know you're not going to go out and buy a new notebook after rebuilding your old one, but I do want to make sure others know that there are options out there in cheap notebooks. In many ways, since there's no pretense of playing high-end games on notebooks, getting a cheap one is actually easier than getting a cheap desktop in a lot of ways...

-Llama

[Fulmar]

Well, that all went so well I decided to replace the dead battery (original circa 2000) with a new one and regained mobility.  I also learned along the way that if you drain your battery to 50% and store it in the refrigerator when not in use you can add up to two years to it's life.

Woah woah woah woah.....woah.  Back the train up to the station.  I've been working for Batteries Plus for 4 years now (currently in Commercial sales), and I've haven't heard anything more preposterous in a while.

Without writing a whole article on the subject of Lithium Ion cells, do not store that battery in the freezer.  You are really not gaining anything keeping it at a lower temperature other than decreasing its nominal self-discharge rate.  The high moisture in a freezer can and will eventually cause corrosion either on the external pin contacts or through the internal circuit board/cell contacts internally.  Also, the uninsulated cells (not designed for freezing temperatures) are going to be prone to subtraction and expansion if you are continuing to place it in a cold environment below freezing and then bringing it back to room temperature and even operating temperature which can be 100F+.  This can cause structural weaknesses especially in the plastic seals that help the battery vent during recharging.

At 100% full charge rate, a brand new laptop battery, left unused in room temperature should retain 80% of its charge after 1 year.  This is just self-discharge, not 'life of a battery.'  Think of it has a full glass of water and its down 1/4 of the way after a year.  You can still fill it back up to the top with a simple recharge.  It is true that when the battery is at around 50%, the self-discharge rate is lower and it is also true that the lower the temperature, the lower the rate at which self-discharge occurs.  However, it does not prolong this 'two years' of life business, period.

What does affect the life of the battery are these characteristic.  As in how many years you're going to get out of the battery
- Manufacturing quality of the cells
- Depth of discharge and number of charging cycles used
  + The deeper the discharge, the fewer number of charging cycles you will get over its life.  If you did near 100% discharge all the time, you'll see anywhere from 300-500 charging cycles.  If you did say 10% the majority of the time, you can see upwards of 1000.  But don't think of this as more cycles = more years.  Just think of it as the more times you're plugging it in which doesn't translate really to more 'years' on the battery.  I can explain on this further if needed
- Care.  No moisture, maintain room temperature.  The electronics are designed for common use and storage, not extereme applications such as the desert or freezer.
- Age of the cells.  The physical chemicals will eventually break down over time.

For someone that uses the computer and leaves it plugged in for two years and say one day decides to use the battery, don't think you're going to have a brand new battery simply because it was never really used.  They enjoy their exercise.

To wrap this up quickly, the simple answer is 2-4 years of life at regular usage, period.

[BaldEagl]

I looked at the netbooks and decided not to go that route.

If I was going to go new it was going to be a notebook with at least a 2 Ghz CPU.

Even that Dell at $419 is $140 more than I spent and on a tight budget I just wanted a functional laptop which is what I ended up with. 

Maybe even more than the RAM the upgrade to XP was a huge improvement.  Before that I was totally limited in what software I could run includung browsers, security software, etc.  Any Java app or flash site was a pain.  Now I can breeze right along using the latest apps.  This thing even runs the Netflix movie viewer even though it's only got 1/2 the recommended system specs.  That was an unexpected but greatly appreciated bonus.

It really does amaze me sometimes how a few upgrades, and keeping a clean system, can keep an old machine like this or my Dell running smoothly.

[EDIT]  Fulmer, it's not in the freezer.  It's in the refigerator.  I'll dredge up the test data I found and post it later.

Well that was quick.  Here's one of several that I read:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

[Denholm]

Nicely done Eagl! That cable management looks better than mine, I'm jealous!

[Fulmar]

[EDIT]  Fulmer, it's not in the freezer.  It's in the refigerator.  I'll dredge up the test data I found and post it later.

Well that was quick.  Here's one of several that I read:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

My apologies on the freezer vs refrigerator, but I still wouldn't do it, for the same exact reasons as I wrote above.  Do you have other sources on this?  Unfortunately, nothing in that article explains what I explained in my first post.  Yes, high temperatures during storage and operation will lower the life, but this is outside of normal operation.  The storage comments in that article are referring to self-discharge and oxidation.  At the end of the article he makes the suggestions to store it at 40% in the refigerator when not in use.  Putting my concerns on that environment aside, the lower temperature is only lowering the self-discharge rate (in the short run).  As to the 'oxidation' progression, I have no data on that and he supports none.

I cannot think of a good scenario that warrants this storage technique.  As per his chart:


25C is 77F, a bit higher than room temperature.  At the proper storage % of 40%, you still maintains 96% of its 'life' in the cells.  At 0C or 32F, you gain 2% in life of the cells, but you're opening a whole new can of worms with the elements as I said before.  40C is 104F, pretty hot for storage.  60C is 140F, thats pretty freakin hot to store something.  Basically, between the ranges of a refrigerator, say 38F, and room temperature, you're gaining ~ 2% in the life of the cells if stored at 40% charge.  14% if it was store improperly at 100%.

Do you plan on storing laptop batteries next to your eggs and milk for upwards of a year to warrant the dangers to it?  Do you not use them regular?  Or is the laptop just really a mini desktop that stays in the kitchen?

Plus the article fails to support his argument with any data that is cited.  I can make charts with random numbers.  I will believe him that his numbers are correct, but it is a poorly written article especially with having no sources outside of his opinion per se.  Though, what he does speak is fairly accurate.  He is the founder of Cadex who do make some really nice stuff.  Their C7400ER analyzer is quite the little machine for $3000, though some of our manufacturers/vendors of our batteries will not honor warranties if they found out their stuff was hooked up to a Cadex as one rep told me, "they destroy the batteries."  Which I generally do not agree with unless they were tested improperly, but that's the way the business goes.

But by all means, let me see these articles you're reading.

Edit: 
Keep in mind that site is run by Cadex, they're not a manufacturer of batteries, though they are expertly versed in the subject matter enough so that their electronics stuff in industry leading.  I have reservations about reading their suggestions on product they do not physically design or manufacturer.

[BaldEagl]

Here's a couple more of the articles I read on Li Ion batteries.  I see now that Wiki bases their information on the previous article I posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery

http://www.electronics-lab.com/articles/Li_Ion_reconstruct/

As well as more anecdotal information such as this (and others):

http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap10-page6.asp

I was reading all of this so I'd understand the best way to manage the charge cycles.

To answer your question my laptop is more like a mini desktop, most often plugged in but occasionally dragged about (once every month or two) on battery power.

As to the actual storage the battery is in a taped shut static free bag and enclosed in a foam "pocket" within a small cardboard box near the bagels and pastries, not the milk and eggs.   

Relative to the environment, winter wouldn't pose much of a problem as I keep the house around 68F but in the summer I leave the AC off until the days are running into the mid-high 80's (depending on humidity) then I set the AC to about 75 and leave it until the weather starts to cool again.

I was just thinking that, as seldom as the battery actually gets used that gaining a little extra shelf life out of it would be a good thing.

As I was looking for these articles I read in another one that manufacturers typically store Li Ion batteries at 59F.  I don't know if that's true or not.  I'm guessing my refrigerator is around 40F give or take a couple of degrees.

Geez... maybe I shouldn't have posted.

[BaldEagl]

Scuzzy... can you delete this thread?  Please?   

[Fulmar]

I don't see why we have to delete it.  I tried my best to respectively disagree with you on certain matters.  I think we at least shared some important information on batteries.  Did I come off that harsh?

Your other computer stuff you posted is good stuff!

[BaldEagl]

I'd had a few last night.  I need to remember to stay away from the BBs in that condition.

[BaldEagl]

I'm really dissapointed only one person commented on my nice rewiring job on my main machine.   

[Denholm]

You're beyond me.

I still like the cable-management.