Aspire One A110: A Tablet Hack

Hey guys. This is my first post on the forums. I think. I haven't been on here for a while. Anyways, I would like to share with you my tablet hack of the aspire one A110. Basically, I just have some pictures of the almost finished product and a short video showing what it looks like booting up and stuff. Unfortunately I didn't to take pictures of the whole process. It was just a weekend project. However, if I see enough interest in this, I will gladly post a tutorial or summary on how to do this. I also have a 20gb hard drive I previously installed on this - I couldn't imagine using the slow 8gb SSD drive to load Windows 7 (as seen on the video).
Anyways, I guess I should talk a little bit about the project. Basically, I bought the touchscreen from DealExtreme for about 50 bucks and decided that what I actually wanted was something to take notes on for school. I searched for an A110 tablet mod, but the only thing I found was some post on a Spanish speaking forum that did not discuss any of the details behind what I had to do to. I had no plan as I took my computer apart. I just took the approach that seemed to look best. As you can see from the pictures (perhaps not so clearly), I unscrewed the hinges from the case and cut out from the plastic casing (the white side), the plastic that sat on top of it for a better fit. If you imagine for a moment that you are sitting in front of your laptop/netbook, think of horizontally flipping the screen 180 degrees and closing the lid. This is what I wanted to do since the battery LED's are still showing and make up space for a more uniform look. I did get lucky with the cable for the screen as it was barely able to make it to the motherboard with the screen flipped this way. After the the screen was positioned, I used thick double sided tap (the white smooshy kind) to fill the sides and hold it in place. It is actually holding surprisingly well, but eventually, I would like replace this design or lack of.
So if you have any questions or especially suggestions, I would appreciate your feedback. Thanks!

The article is on my website at: TwoGuysOneBit for a video and more high quality pictures. Otherwise, click on the YouTube video.

 

You should try using the handwriting recognition, it works amazingly well and is a lot faster than the on screen keyboard. It also takes up less screen space than the OSK. The Windows Journal is also handy for taking quick notes and you can make it read back your notes aloud. All this stuff is available natively since Win Vista but you can even get backports of the same programs for XP

I'm doing a a tablet project myself with an AO531h but I wouldn't recommend the conversion for the unskilled. The hinges work better, you can reverse them and it folds back perfectly without any case mods but the touchscreen itself is too thick to allow the bezel to stay snapped on. There isn't much space between the edge of the touchscreen and the plastic clips and it twists the bezel just enough so the plastic clips don't grab. Plus it's not a solderless install, the webcam uses a different plug than the D150 kit I used (No kit for the 531's and I doubt there will be due to the bezel problem). So to make the touchscreen work I'm having to file the bezel down about a 1/16" on all four sides. After I confirm the operation I'll trim it with black automotive trim adhesive/sealant which will allow access fairly easily with a an exacto knife. I'm also adding several switches to the bezel, sacrificing the webcam (but not the webcam wires which will go to a stripped down wireless mouse USB dongle) and going for a little more finished look. There is zero extra space inside this model and I'd recommend most people stick to models with a little more room to work with, you have to sacrifice the keyboard to have a place to put the touchscreen controller board ... Or get a small SS disk drive to replace the hard drive and mount the controller alongside it.

I should have some in-progress photos up in the next day or two .... http://netbook2chartplotter.blogspot.com Right now I'm (unsuccessfully) trying to get the pinout for the webcam module and the bluetooth connector on the motherboard ... They just had to make this model different from the rest and add an extra wire to both ports and then fail to document the change anywhere

 

Very cool. See, I originally would have loved to have something more tablet/laptop like as in still have the functionality of the tablet while being able to flip the screen back as a notebook. However, with the back casing being as round shaped at it is, it would have looked pretty ugly. So I went with my approach to keep things a little slimmer. For the USB wiring of the touch screen I soldered it directly to one of the USB ports instead of soldering to the motherboard.

 

This is cool.
I am planning on doing the same thing with my AO751 which has an 11.6 inch screen which i think would be the perfect size for a tablet. This one also does not have the 600 vert pixels limitation of the smaller netbooks. I have a thread started on the 11.6 forum on here.
Instead of going totally touchscreen I have chosen a pen interface. http://converttotouch.com/
With any luck I'll figure out how to mount that little device in the case and make everything look flush.

 

From what I've seen of the 751's they appear to use the exact same hinge and lid design as the 531's just a little longer and taller. If you have enough extra in the LCD cable to swap it to the other side you should be able to just unbolt the nut at the hinge point and swap them. Then it can fold back perfectly into a tablet with no other hacking on the LCD case and bezel.

With the case being so thin and so tight you are probably saving yourself a lot of grief using that Convert to Touch gadget. Even if you could find a touchscreen kit for a 751, you'd have to make sure it was a thin one because there is no give in the bezel like the smaller screen models and you can't get the bezel to snap back down and hold

 

Agreed. The hinges on the 751 are perfect for going either way. I will probably have to remove the keyboard at the very least though because otherwise it may press keys while in tablet mode. I couldn't find any actual touchscreens for this size of screen so thats why I decided on the convert to touch thing. It looks small enough that it should look too clunky and stuff. Portability is the #1 priority.

 

any updates on this hack?