15 June 2010

Back In Biz

image from www.brianmicklethwait.com

This makes me one very very very happy hackintosher! Has Christmas just arrived early this year?

Though I don't know why the repair tech put me on F.02 BIOS and what's worse, the warranty start date on the bios page was put to 11/20/2009 when it was 12/22/2009 originally (the date I bought my Mini 311)...hmmm....

Anyhow, my serial no., when checked at the HP site returns a good date so that's that. And the most important part is that they didn't suspect I was responsible for this incident at all. :-) My unit was fixed for free. Gratis.

I'm now on F.15, icelord unlocked. I could very well try overclocking again, but for now, I'm still on Windows 7. For as much as I want to "OS X-ify" my adored Mini 311 immediately, I've to remember that there's an 8-5 day job waiting for me and without which I wouldn't be able to fund my tech addiction, so I definitely have to sleep tonight. Plus I'd prefer to get overclocking done and stabilized prior to installing Snow Leo and why you might ask? I don't know either - just my OCD kicking in again.

So, overclocking gurus out there, please help the noob right  here who is in dire need of your wisdom. :-)

P.S. I bricked the Mini 311 the night before the Philippines' 2010 Elections. It took roughly the same amount of time, which is around a month or so, for Noy Noy Aquino to be declared President elect and for HP to repair my Mini 311. Gosh, that was really inspiring customer service from HP, I must say @_@

14 comments:

Stacey said...

I read your page everyday, and it's helped me alot to update my mini311 to OS X and i'm very glad you finally got yours back!! I however am stuck at installing my airport extreme card i got from ebay. I can't for the life me figure out how you rerouted the u.fl to where you did so it can reach the full height slot. What exactly did you disassemble? I took out the keyboard but then i got scared and put it back haha. None of my friends are into modding so you're my only hope. Thanks!

LeMaurien19 said...

Thanks for reading my blog :)

I had to open the Mini 311 up. Be really careful. You'd have to take out the upper deck of the chassis (silver part containing the trackpad) I'd say it's not for the faint of heart.

1) take off the battery and unscrew back panel cover.

2) take out hard drive, pci cards, ram.

3) pull out those rubber feet - all of them.

4) Unloose all screws on the back of the 311. You do this with the unit closed, face down. There are a lot of screws - remember where each one goes.

5) detach the keyboard - remember to loosen the zif connector :)

6) turn the unit face up again to pry the upper deck of the chassis loose to detach it - this is admittedly the trickiest part because you gotta be careful with the plastic clips all around, especially along the edge of the battery slot. They're quite easy to crack.

7)U.fl antenna wire is at the right side, pull it gently from the hole to the pci slot and rewire it so that it goes into that hole to the hard drive bay.

8)Put everything back together, except for the hard drive and back panel cover.

9) At this point, it's up to how you arrange the U.fl antenna wiring from the hard drive area to the full height PCI slot.

10) Also, it would be a quite a tight fit and there would be a tiny budge once the back panel cover it put back on - but that's very minimal and hardly noticeable.

joe_dude said...

That's great news! For OC'ing, start with OC Tuner.

You have the N280, right? 2.0 GHz (200 MHz x 10) is probably the upper limit.

OC Tuner:
http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=2445

BIOS OC'ing:
http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=3951

Good luck!

Stacey said...

I did everything and had success moving the wires. I put everything back together and my mini won't turn on :(

LeMaurien19 said...

@Stacey
Moving the U.fl wire shouldn't cause such problem.
You did ground yourself properly as we all know we should do before opening up computer components, right?

Anonymous said...

You said you just bought an Atheros AR5B93 for the 311c.
Can you elaborate on that choice, compared to a classic dell 1510?

Stacey said...

I'm thinking something might have went wrong in that area. I'm going to move the wire back to its orignal spot and send it out for warranty. Think it will be covered? Will they get pissy I have snow leo installed?

Tony said...

I ♥ U LeMaurien, your so dreamy with your osx skills and all :) thank God for your OCD and love for tech ;)

LeMaurien19 said...

Got it ok to overclock up to 2.07 GHz
2.0Ghz | 200Mhz | 800 | 768+32 | 3:2 | 1200
= this is the limit for the Atom N280.
Anything higher than a Bus Speed of 800 will brick the unit.

But so far, 1.8Ghz | 180Mhz | 720 | 512+208 | 3:2 | 1080
is still my fave.

6/18/2010 1:37 PM


LeMaurien19 said...
@Anonymous said...
*You said you just bought an Atheros AR5B93 for the 311c.
Can you elaborate on that choice, compared to a classic dell 1510?
6/18/2010 3:43 AM*

- all the Dell 1510 I found on ebay were from the US and shipping to where I am adds more to the price. On the other hand, I have this seller that I regularly order my stuff from and he doesn't have a Dell 1510 but only the Atheros, plus its free shipping. So that's the main reason why I got the Atheros instead.

A pretty silly reason, huh? ;)

Anonymous said...

Well, I understand your reasons but my question was merely technical: is the Atheros a better choice than the dell 1510 (or at least easier to hack) ?
In other words, should I get a dell 1510 from ebay without remorse?

Tony said...

I got the atheros card as well mainly for backtrack linux and noooooooooot the crappy support of broadcom chipset

Tony said...

ohh quick question lemaureen! I know Icelord f15 bios comes in 2 different flavours, 1mb and 2mb I have the 1000nr model. I have to stick with the 1mb bios or brick it if I go with the 2mb?

LeMaurien19 said...

^Tony,
I honestly don't know and I won't even venture a guess cause bios flashing is not something to be taken lightly.

Better hit the forums; myhpmini.com for example.. Better safe than sorry.

For everyone's FYI, mine is a 311-1002TU with an Atom N280 procie - it uses the 1MB bios file.

LeMaurien19 said...

^Anonymous
Atheros card: I guess am gonna find out how it fares.