Side note: Replacing fans on a Dell Dimension 8100

Please excuse my polluting this L400 blog with a post about the Dell workstation “Dimension 8100″, however it could be interresting for a few people and I’m not about to start a whole new blog for one post…

Anyway, I’ve just completed a replacement of both the system/chassis fan and the psu fan on this machine and it is quite possible although a bit cumbersome. Chassis fan (sucks out warm air from the cpu heatsink/shroud) is quite easily replaced, the only “problem” is you have to keep the motherboard plug since it’s a proprietary Dell connection. Just cut off the cables from the new fan and splice them onto a stump of the old fans wires+connector and you’re done.

I’ve put in 2x Zalman fans, one 92mm chassis fan (ZM-FM2) and one 80mm PSU fan (ZM-FM1). Shouldn’t set you back more than 12$ for both.

The ZM-FM2 runs at 2825rpm when installed as is = untolerably high noise, think hairdryer. You really need to use the resistor that comes with the fan. In the pic you’ll se I made a new incision for the resistor but now that you know you’ll need it you can just include it when you make the first cut. Trial and error my friends… With resistor the fan runs at ca. 1700rpm with greatly reduced noise. No errors reported.

PSU fan does not give any speed reading (I don’t think it did before switching either) but should run at maximum to keep the psu happy, the ZM-FM1 is rated at 0.17A, 3000 rpm while the original fan is 0.41A, 3600rpm (this manufacturers documentation says 0.26A though). There’s still noise coming from the psu that I had hoped to get rid of, a sort of electrical whine / buzz. Well, atleast the overall noise is reduced and the computer seems happy enough. No errors reported.

PSU side views (Cover removed)

Old PSU fan (right) and new PSU fan (left)

New chassis fan after the cable mod

CompactFlash instead of HDD

With 2x4GB cf-cards now installed and used as main storage in the L400 (C: Kingston Elite pro, D: Transcend), these are some random thoughts.

* When to NOT use compactflash as storage
CF cards will wear out fast if you use regular XP/W2K (or any other big operating system) and use the computer regularly. In my case this laptop gets a maximum of say a few weeks worth of real usage per year when I get a chance to go on some vacation and need to study at the same time. The basic rule is; if you use the computer regularly – you need a regular hdd.

* nLited XP
With this said about regular XP – If you’re ready to customize an XP installation I’ve found that nLite does everything I need and simply works right away, and oh – it’s free!. Remove unwanted bits and keep the bobs you want… sure my event log isn’t the prettiest after XP was shrunk to a 180mb large iso but it does work in every aspect I’ve tried so far.

* MLC vs SLC flash
As SLC flash cards have longer life and faster speeds and now can be bought for roughly the same cost as MLC cards, which type to use is no longer an issue. After first ordering a cheap Transcend 4Gb card which turned out to be MLC I quickly ordered another card, this time the Kingston Elite Pro 4GB (SLC) card. Check out Kingstons website for a quick explanation of the difference between the two types of flash cards and which of their models that use them.

* L400 specific notes
I experienced an unexpected shutdown on the first attempt, the heatsink was very hot and that made me realize the bios was set to force the cpu to 700MHz. Apparently not recommended when you’ve messed with parts the way I have. No problem for me anyway, I used it at 450MHz all the time before modding and don’t mind doing so in the future too. Anyway, here’s a good tip for everyone with an L400: If you’ve never removed the factory installed cooling solution (heatsink) – don’t do it now either. You will not be getting any discernable benefits and you may even make the overheating problem worse.

Whoa, the EMI affecting the speaker is even worse than with the old HDD, I have no choice but to remove it or I’ll go crazy. Done and dusted, what an improvement. Operation is now almost completely silent, sure some of it is due to the fan not running but let’s not get picky…

* Perceived speed
Setup of XP slow (nLited XPSP3 at ca 180mb), took just over one hour (on Kingston ElitePro CF 133x 4GB).
From power on to ctrl-alt-del 35s. Normal/fast.
General usage: Normal to fast.
Updated verdict: Normal. (Compared to a 5200 rpm hdd)

Verdict: Feels good and fast, the question is perhaps how long it will last but by putting tempfiles on the secondary MLC card and doing as much business as possible on usb sticks time can only tell. Also changed paging and tempfile settings: Page file none. All tempdirectories rerouted to D:\TEMP etc. All program installations will be made to D aswell, all to help the primary card last longer.

More testing will follow, hopefully it will still work in october when I need it while I travel…

Edit:

* To prevent crashes: turn off power management
After experiencing a few strange crashes when returning to the L400 after not using it for a while, I disabled all power management within windows (control panel – power options – choose always on) and haven’t seen another crash. The screen would show seemingly random colours, blocks, lines and whatnot, sometimes changing in response to keystrokes but mostly just humming along in it’s own universe. First I feared the cf cards had already been used up but since disabling power management everything is back to normal.

Linux on Dell L400

I didn’t think I would run into much of any problems installing a few different Linux varietes, but installation was actually more problematic than not. Maybe some of the problems are due to a bad cd burn, the not very trustable Dell cd reader or… well certainly it couldn’t be my fault! Anyway, see the results below. Perhaps it should be said I am an absolute beginner at Linux and need it to just work. I don’t want to sit around and fiddle with command lines and rewrite the kernel every night. I just want to write som docs, listen to music and watch a video or two.

Considering how much noise the Dell cd makes and portability issues you’re not going to want to use a LiveCD as a permanent scenario, these tests are meant as test whether a certain Linux distribution indeed works and is suited for a permanent installation on hdd/cf/etc.

Knoppix 5.01 LiveCD
Confirmed basic functionality, once the desktop environment is started it feels quite snappy. No trouble installing, just pop in the cd, boot from it and wait. You can get a permanent environment by saving it to usb, to retrieve it you boot from the cd as usual and then specify you want your saved environment by entering ( xxx ) just before the loading starts. Easy enough. It is possible to make a hdd installation but not recommended as Knoppix is apparently only intended for live CD use.

Puppy Linux 2.15 LiveCD
Confirmed basic functionality. Longer boot than Knoppix, but desktop environment feels good. Quite memory hungry for what is supposed to be a distro for old, slow computers. The L400 being maxed out at 256mb leaves you with very little space to move around in the Puppy desktop (ca 10mb free). LiveCD therefore not recommended, if you want to run puppy, make it a permanent install. Could not install a .deb package, pupzip suggested to install “undeb” but I could not find any such file with the application installer.

Puppy Linux 4 LiveCD
I’m trying the new version aswell, I like Puppy for some reason. No luck here though, just after starting to boot it says “pup_400.sfs not found. Dropping out to initial-ramdisk console…”. FAIL. SOLVED! Thanks to this thread, just entering “puppy ide=nodma” when asked to wait for normal boot or specify boot options makes puppy very happy. This is apparently something that can happen with certain cd readers, in this case the one that accompanies the L400. Version 4 feels fast and fresh, now leaving ca. 110mb for operations (of 256). Confirmed basic functionality.

Ubuntu 8.04.1 Desktop LiveCD
First burned cd would not complete install or cd test, just “Error reading boot cd”. Only option is to reboot. Helpful not so much. A third burn got it working but sloooooowwwwly loading. Seriously slow, let it work for 10mins and then shut it off, any potential result would have been excrutiatingly slow or non-responsive. Silent loading (just a bar going back and forth) looks good but the user has no idea what’s happening, or in this case what’s not happening.

Xubuntu 8.04.1 LiveCD
A slimmer Ubuntu should work I thought and popped this one in, first loading went much quicker than the regular Ubuntu. Then comes the silent loading part, a little bar going back and forth while it sometimes acesses the cd and other times just sits there. After ca. 4 minutes the bar turned in to a progress bar and got to 100%, yay I thought, here we go! But then the computer just shut down instead (not overheated). FAIL.

Fedora 9 Live KDE LiveCD
First burned cd will not complete install, outputs “over current change” and a bunch of buffer errors on device sr0? Not very helpful. Just tell the user what the problem is in english? Documentation seems outdated, see this . None of these files exists on the server and you have to browse the ftp server manually to find out. Main page confusing with all the different versions and no intuitive explanation of what’s what. Calls all relevant files i686 while documentation says to get the i386 files. i386 files exist on the server but holds no iso files? FAIL.

Damn small linux 4.4.5 LiveCD
Some usb erros at boot. Not a problem it seems since it started just fine anyway. Feels basic but nice, got the media player to work almost right away (had to save the .pls and open it to get a stream working). Cannot install FirstClass (the .deb package I’ve talked about) even after I managed to follow instructions to “Upgrade to GNU utils” and “Enable Apt” which seemed necessary. When running the dpkg (depackage?) command specified at firstclass’s website it just says that the .deb is not a debian format archive. Some quick googling yields no solution. OS feels nice and fast though, if I could install what I needed this would probably be the Linux variety I’d use, after sprucing it up a little.

Debian Live Lenny KDE Desktop LiveCD
Disk error. Boot failed. Nuff said.

Winner: Damn Small Linux! Small, fast and best of all: actually works.
Second place: Puppy Linux. Has a nice feeling about it, pretty fast and works.
Last place: Fedora 9. Confusing website, non-functioning installation. Way to not go.

I have to say that -in my view- using Linux on the L400 is going to have to take some work and is sadly not something I can just install and live happily with ever after. For my part it means I’ll return to my original plan, to use XP (or an nLited version of it) or perhaps nLited Win2K on this machine.

Edit: As you can see in the comments below, one peson reports success in installing Debian and Ubuntu. The post reflects my personal, linux-noob thoughts and are not to be read as final verdicts on a whole OS. Some of them I couldn’t get to work but there are obviously people out there that do. Good luck

BIOS downgrade /fails/ WORKS!

Fudge! No luck downgrading the BIOS (tried A08 AND A03). The flash program says it’s done but the bios stays at the same version (A09). Tried removing cmos battery, waiting and then flashing but no luck. Apparently it won’t allow a bios with an older date than the current one.

If there’s anyone out there with a Dell L400 using bios version A08 or lower (especially A03) – please report:
A. Does the fan start at boot and then never start again? (True for BIOS ver A09)
B. Does the fan start at boot and then start again during use, i.e cycle on and off depending on what you do?
(This is how the fan should normally work.)
C. What temperatures and/or fan speeds does Speedfan report? (In BIOS A09 it falsely says no fan and ACPI temp 50C)

Edit 25th Nov ’08:
Succeeded in downgrading to version A08, see more recent post above.

Fan control issue confirmed

At this point I can confirm the fan control issue as raised by numerous websites, the L400 with the A09 bios cannot regulate the fan properly and gives false readings (ACPI temperature at 50C). See for example this thread.

Confirmed because the behaviour of the fan I’ve put in is just as good/bad as with the original, even though this fan lacks the yellow cable = rpm readings and whatnot. This is good in the sense that it doesn’t run the fan a lot, bad in that it may overheat and shut down or run the fan constantly making the user shut down instead… I wouldn’t do any critical work on the L400 and whatever work you do do needs to be backed up frequently.

It is rumoured that the A03 bios may restore some or all functionality and I will be testing this within a week… stay tuned Earlier Dell bioses avaible from their FTP here.

In other news; the Addonics adapter has arrived and is confirmed to be working (New 2gb 80x card works, old 512 and 256mb cards refuse to work properly), now I’m just waiting for a bigger and better 4Gb 133x Transcend cf-card to arrive.

40mm fan working in the L400!

Fan mod complete, a fine-toothed saw and a nail file gave two sides the shaving they needed to fit. I ended up having to do some light filing on the palmrest assembly too; a 1mm trim on a 1cm area above the fan. It’s where the topmost leaf of the fan is resting in the pic below. Not a side-blowing fan you might remark – true, but it’s better than no fan at all, the stock fan makes such horrible noise. And hey, even if it sucks it blows…

Fits? A snug fit, not secured but ok. Thanks to the small spaces it’s more or less forced to sit where it is and shouldn’t be able to move around too much. Added a patch of double sided tape underneath, not sure how much contact there actually is between it and the case/felt-pad originally installed. A slight bulge in the upper left corner of the keyboard could not be avoided. Edit: The fan measures 40x40x10 (original size)

Noise? Well, the fanleaves themselves make no discernable noise, there is some kind of little *krrx* coming from what may be miniscule dust (from the filing) stuck in the motor. If I had to do it over again I would enlist someones help and have them vacuum the filings away from the fan as the operation was performed. If the keyboard is screwed down all the way with the leftmost screw the fan starts hitting something. Leaving it slightly unscrewed shouldn’t be an issue.

Fan control? Sketchy as it ever was. Starts when the machine boots and then shuts down, like before. Stressed the 500MHz setting for 30 minutes but could not get fan to start, like before. Restarted and set it att 700MHz = fan runs constantly, as it did before if the system was hot when rebooted. With the new fan that’s not an issue! Testing will continue…

All in all a more or less sucessful mod I’m proud to say

Oh, and a useful tip to anyone about to adapt two wires into a three-pin connector: Leave a portion of the old cables sitting in the connector! I cut it off right by the white connector and that just makes it irritatingly difficult to stuff new cables in there and securing them with tape. Duh! Just leave some and intwine the red and black cables from old and new and put a little electrically insulating tape around it and it will look neat and professional. If my fan solution works in the long run I’ll sacrifice the second dell fan to get a decent looking connection.

Cooling examined 2

Tried a 5mm heatsink with thermal tape on the cpu and it is definetly 2 if not 3mm:s too thick.
Adding two bottom assembly screws in the previous heatsink holes could perhaps draw the motherboard
1 mm downwards on the cpu side, but you’re left with a wonky board and no way to draw
the needed nb-sink down an equal amount. Darn again.

As it turns out the fan included in the Revoltec chipset cooling set should be much easier and more effective to use than the Scythe Kaze mini, this due to the open sides of the revoltec fan. The Kaze mini has closed walls all around the fan making the modding needed far more extensive than getting rid of a few mm:s of single plastic ridge on the revoltec fan. Good job revoltec. Link to their product description is avaible in links in the right column.

Fan did start with the wires merely held on the connector, so the fan mod should work out. The thing is completely silent when out of the case anyway, I’m hopeful about getting it in there. Did not run constantly as I thought it would (it doesn’t have the third, yellow cable = rpm readings), it ran when turned on and then stopped like the normal fan. Will have to mod the plastic rig of the fan though, a bit too big and round. Doublesided tape will be what’s keeping it there, none of the holes match.

Cooling examined

Hesitance be gone! Cooling on the L400 demystified: CPU cooled via glue/paste contact (dried up in these shots) with metal tape via heatsink (helped by fan when installed). NB cooled via glued/taped on metal plate which scarcely has any contact with the steel wing.

The cpu seems to be covered in some kind of old glueish looking gunk. Would it possible or recommendable to clean it? If I put a heatsink on it I will have to throw away the whole stock cooling rig. Would a small heatsink get too hot and perhaps melt the keyboard close above? Could a slightly bigger heatsink sit comfortably on this small processor? (Jiggle risk…)

On the other hand, the current heatsink is pretty nifty, If I could find a good pad of some sort I could
just remove the gunk, remove the metal tape-thing attached to the heatsink (the grey patch) and reattach
the stock cooling. That is minus the cutout I will have to do to fit the heatsinks on the nb. Currently
the nb cooling pad/metal piece barely touches the metal wing so I’m not worried about temps there.

Ran system for 4 hours after reassembly, the fiddling with the heatsink caused no obvious problems.

Update: There’s not really any choice as far as the cpu and nb goes, you have to use the stock stuff. The lowest heatsink I’ve found is 5mm thick which would produce a noticable bulge in the keyboard. 4mm would work but at this minimal height any obscure heatsink would have such low heat dissipating abilities that it wouldn’t really do any difference for the cpu. (Stock is approx. 3mm thick)

Some rough measurements in mm (w – l – h.  Argh, no table function in the wp editor…)

CPU die 9 – 10,5 -
NB die 29 – 29 -
NB pad 25 – 25 – 1
GPU die 22,5 – 22,5 -

I’ve decided to keep the stock cooling solution but replace the old tape-paste stuff with atleast new, albeit cheap thermal tape.

Ordered:
1 Revoltec chipset cooling set (only bought it for the loose pieces of heat transfer-tape included) 85SEK/14$
1 Scythe Mini Kaze 40x40x10mm fan 80SEK/13$ – RETURNED (revoltec fan better for my use)
1 Dual CF to IDE adapter from www.webconnexxion.com (Addonics distributor in the EU) 19€, 36€ delivered

A few thoughts

CPU-cooling examined: The top part is removable by getting the three scews from under the motherboard.
What lies beneath is hard to say. There are two little cables coming out from what I guess has to be the cpu
and nb. Perhaps one could try removing them and see what happens? Dunno.

I’m hesitant about removing the current cooling arrangement. It could prove difficult to reassemble or replace.

Pre mod weight: ca 1362g (no main battery)
Post mod weight: ca 1337g (I kid you not.)

Difference ca. 25g. Not very much, but atleast I’ve gotten rid of some unnecessary stuff and improved circulation. Replacing the hdd with a cf-ide adapter and 1-2cf cards should nudge the weight in the right direction, lose some EMI, and further improve overall system temperature.

Ran for 4½ hours: HD finished at 43C, could be due to actual use for a while.
Ran for 2 more hours: Samsungs hd diagnostic tool. The hdd is making intermittent screeching noises. No fault found.

Round up:

* Remove fan – DONE. Seems to work ok.
* Remove modem – DONE. No problems.
* Remove speaker – DONE. No problems.
* Remove parallell and modem port if possible – FAIL. Not possible.
* Remove battery latch (battery is dead) – DONE. No problems.
* Replace or refurbish cpu/nb cooling solution
* Alleviate the EMI on line-out
* Replace failing HDD with CF-to-IDE adapter and 1-2 CF cards.

Cooling modification to be examnied further next. See y’all.

Oh, by the way, does anyone know of a cheap and fairly reliable way to measure temps, f.e. wireless IR-thermometer or some kind of small sensor thingy? (Cheap = less than 50$ shipped)

If so, leave a comment please.

Removing battery latch (+ motherboard reference pic)

Since my battery is dead and a new one costs ~700SEK (~115$) I might aswell remove even the possibility of putting a battery in. Thus: battery latch removed. You do need to remove the motherboard since the metal arm extends under it, holding it where it should be. Very easy operation, just follow the manual.

Result? Some more gaping holes but what the heck.

Overview: The underside of the motherboard. Notice where the cooling solution can be loosened (part of it), it’s the triangular thingy there to the left. You can also see part of the heatsink (white, curved for fan airflow.)