Aspire One A110 add a 2.5; HDD

I wrote a very detailed(relative to others I find) guide for everyone with the A110 model's convince :roll:

http://www.theacerguy.com/2009/01/aspire-one-a110-25-sata/


Happy Chinese New year!!
Morris Lee

 

Any chance u have higher resolution photos of the soldering? Hard to see the detail with those tiny blog pics

 

switched to the 1024x768(was the next selectable size) it is very very clear now(i thought mentioning that R364 has to be soldered was enough)

 

After installing xp and doing the EWF tweak performance was great but practicality was a real downer. Took the plunge and added a 320GB Western Digital Blue HDD. I also added an extra 1gig of RAM while the case was open.

BTW to anyone who thinks this is a waste of time, here in Aus the HDD version is a lot more expensive than the SSD version. So even after this upgade its still not any more expensive than just buying the HDD version outright

A few tips to anyone wanting to try this:

I am no expert with a soldering iron. Didn't use flux or magnification. Used a cheap $20 soldering iron. Soldering on a surface mount socket is probably too hard for the average person (including me).

- Just make your own socket like the guide says. My sata cable needed extra modification cos all the ground pins didn't have wires, they used this conductive tape thing wrapped around the other wires.
- I used a flathead screwdriver and small hammer (actually its a hammer to smash up toffee) to take apart my power and sata cables.
- I soldered on some spare sata cable wires (they are tiny enough to pit thru the holes on the pcb) onto my sata power plug
- I figured that I would just thread the wires thru the pcb on the motherboard. I was wrong. On the sata port the data pins have holes but the ground pins don't. I used a pin and a small hammer to make the remaining holes. You'll also have to do it on the power as well.
- Once all the holes are made (I skipped one of the ground pins on the sata port, doesn't matter) thread them thru and apply some heat to the joint. The solder thats already in the holes should be adequate. If it isn't, put a tiny bit of solder on your iron and let the solder flow onto the joint. Heat the joint enough so it gives a proper join. When you are done you can clip the tiny wires off.
- Super glue works well keeping the seperate power and sata plugs together

I took some pictures with my phone but they didnt come out very well. The guide above has adequate pics for the job.

Also this guide I used for the pinout:
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... n%26sa%3DN

I've now got Windows 7 Beta installed, runs great. I would have to say theres a bit more heat, although nothing to worry about. Weight increase is barely noticable. I was thinking of getting a zif enclosure for the old ssd, but for the price of the enclosure you can buy an 8GB USB flash drive anyway.