SOLO 5300/5350 UPGRADE 
Thursday, April 28, 2005, 09:05 PM
Use this information at your own risk. Here goes;
Solo 5300/5350 Keyboard, CPU & Heatsink Removal.
The Solo 5300 will accept MPGa 2 CPU from a PIII/Celeron 600Mhz to 1000MHz (1GHz) CPU.
At the bottom of your chassis, there are two screws; one located beside the cd/floppy release latch and the other is located at the end of the memory slot without the screws. Remove these screws and proceed to open the lid of your unit. There are three stubs that holds the keyboard in place. One is located below the left ALT key and space bar, one below the Windows & Ctrl keys and the other to your right between the End key and function (Fn) key. Remove them by using a flat head screw driver to pull them away from the keyboard while pressing down then pulling up to lift the keyboard. The keyboard ribbon is held down by the biege clip, gentle pull the clip up from the left and right side. This will remove the keyboard. Remove the heatsink by removing the four spring loaded screws. Remove the screws and gently lift the heatsink up this will reveal the CPU which is held in its setting by a screw which has an arrow showing how to release and tighten.
Solo 5300/5350 Hinge & Inverter Removal
To expose the hinges; set your LCD (display/monitor) at a 180 degree angle and proceed to push back and pull up on both the right and left lcd hinge covers. Noticable are two screws, one holding each hinge, remove them and also remove the screw holding the LCd cable directly under the left hinge cover. Next pull the extended plastic portion of the lcd cable up for removal. Once the covers are removed close the LCD (display/monitor) and go to the bottom of the unit. Located directly above the two rubber stubs towards the back of the bottom area, there are two screws directly above each rubber stub, remove both screws. Holding both the bottom chassis (base) and the LCD lid return the unit to its correct position and once again open the LCd lid to a 90 degree angle. Pull the entire LCD lid up to remove the lid from the base of the unit. The piece being worked with now is the LCD lid. There are four black rubber stubs located on the LCD bezel (trim piece of plastic surrounding the front of the LCd) remove these rubber stubs, then remove the exposed screws. Remove the lcd bezel with a flat head screw drive/table knife by inserting the flat edge between the bezel and the lid (back cover) continue this process around the perimeter of the bezel using care especially in the area of the latch. Remove the additional screws holding the lcd hinge and remove it. To remove the inverter located immediately below the lcd, remove the two screws and the attached lcd cable to the right of the inverter.

One of the beauty of a 5300/5350 is the ability to use a secondary hard drive.The secondary hard drive fits into a secondary caddy (caddy looks similar to the floppy or cd-rom) which utilizes the CD/Floppy drive bay. In my testing I have used 40GB 9mm hard drive on a Solo 5350. The drive becomes handy if you have a need for mass storage or have some highly confidential data that is best kept close.

Solo 5300 laptops can use one of three mini pci cards depending on your need. The unit can use a Action Tec 56k Mini PCI Modem (for those who only need dial up & fax capability) or a 3COM Mini PCI Modem Nic Combo/Xircom Mini PCI Modem Nic Combo (gives both dial up & lan (ethernet/nic) capability).

One common problem among laptops is finding a CD/DVD/CDRW drive with a faceplate that fits your laptop perfectly. However, is it totally necessary to match the faceplate perfectly. No! This is not necessary. In the case of the Solo 5300/5350 if you find a drive with a flat faceplate it will work just as well as the original curved faceplate. However, the faceplate must fit the width of the caddy. Brand drives known to be 100% compatable with this laptop are Teac, Torisan & Toshiba. This drive will accept a CD-ROM, CDRW, CDRWDVD COMBO or even a DVD Burner

It is possible to get a docking station for this unit (GATEWAY MD-3 DOCKING STATION) with various ports. Some of which are; Composite video sync & S-Video (enables the display of your laptop contents on a Television or view VCR/DVD content), Audio ports and 2 PCMCIA card (you have 2 on your unit now you can add two more for expansion devices). However, the biggest benifit of this unit is the PCI slot located on the left side. With this slot you can add a PCI TV tuner (watch cable or regular tv on your laptop) PCI Video card (Add an external monitor with the ability to view different images on each monitor), a PCI WIFI/ETHERNET card (for networking) or the lateast sound card for exceptional sound quality.

After disabling the laptops onboard video (Solo 5350) and disconnecting the power cable connected to the VGA out port of the docking station to prevent hardware conflict (to do so remove the square shaped metal on the bottom of the docking station and you will see the two prong power cable connected to the VGA port), I have been able to connect a 64MB video card to the pci port on the docking station for use of an external monitor. Adding this 64MB video card to the Solo 5350 gives the benefit of being able to run a program requiring 64MB ram without purchasing a newer model laptop. Makes using programs like photoshop a little easier.

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SOLO 1400 AND 1450 UPGRADE 
Sunday, April 17, 2005, 06:12 PM
The Solo 1400 & 1450 has two memory slots and will take a MAX of 1024MB of PC-133 144PIN SO-DIMM. This is TWO bars of 512MB of PC-133 144PIN SO-DIMM. Memory is very important on the Solo 1400 unit because it uses the Shared memory architecture SMA (The video card uses the memory you install).
The Solo 1450 takes a FCPGa CPU. The ones worth considering are the PIII or Celeron 1GHz to 1.066GHz CPU.

So your Solo 1400/1450 needs more storage space. Laptop hard drives can now be found from 6GB to 100GB, anything lower I would not recommend. For the Solo 1400/1450 the maximum hard drive recommended is a 60GB 9.5MM SLIM 2.5 INCH 4200RPM NOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE.

The Solo 1450 & 1400 takes several different model optical drive. However, you can obtain a DVD, CDRW or CDRWDVD combo for this unit. The brand drive used in most of my testing is QSI.
One problem that seems to be common with the Solo 1400/1450 is that of a loose DC connector. In my opinion, this may be a result of the soldered points on the DC power connector (part where ac adapters connects to latptop) becoming loose from heat (The heat comes from CPU while using the laptop)and pressure at times from the AC adapter. When plugged in the adapter is sometimes left to hang, the cpu heats up and the soldered points become loose due to the heat combined with pressure from the adapter. This is easily fixed by soldering the loose points once again.
Usually, when there is a problem with the LCD of the Solo 1400/1450 one or more of these issues may apply; bad lcd inverter, bad lcd flex cable or bad backlight. The problem may be the inverter when the screen goes dimm on boot/startup (screen with faint image in the background). However, when the images on the screen appears to be scrambled, this is usually a problem with the video cable.
If you are wonder where your wireless (WiFi) card is, its located within the LCD bezel/lid. The wireless network card interfaces with a connector that is apart of the lcd flex cable (Yes somewhat strange). The card is held by a pair of clips. To get to this card; remove the six rubber stubs (4 top & 2 bottom) and then the screws from the lcd bezel (plastic surrounding the front of lcd) and carefull with a butter knife or flat head screw remove the plastic. Proceed to carefully remove the lcd to expose the lcd flex cable with wifi connector and the WiFi card


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SOLO 1200 UPGRADE 
Monday, April 11, 2005, 11:08 PM
Since there is only one memory slot on a Solo 1200 Laptop, the max extended memory is 256MB PC-133 144pin S)-DIMM.
Though this unit was not made with a DVD Drive it is possible to remove the existing drive and install a DVD-ROM. The DVD Drive I would suggest for the Solo 1200 laptop is the 8x QSI DVD-ROM Drive GW P/N: 5502295. Updating to the newest Bios (version 27.02) and Windows XP will also help in recognising the drive. I have also successfully installed QSI CDRW/DVD Combo drives on this unit. Note this was based on a trial and error process. It may work for some units and not others, don't know why.
For the Solo 1200 Laptop you may install virtually any size 9.5MM Slim laptop hard drive. However, in my testings the largest drive I have used on this unit is a 40GB 9.5MM HARD DRIVE.


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GATEWAY SOLO 2150 UPGRADE 
Tuesday, March 29, 2005, 11:30 PM
The Solo 2150 only comes with one upgradable memory slot and 32MB on board. The maximum memory usable on this unit is 288MB (32MB on board & 256MB in open slot. Memory type 144pin pc-100 so-dimm).
Located under the memory bay is also the mini pci slot, use this slot to upgrade to a modem or a modem/nic combo.
The recommended Modem/Nic card for this unit is Action Tec mini pci modem ethernet combo. If you only wish to change/upgrade the modem, Action Tec is also the brand of choice. However, in my testing I have also found the 3COM Mini PCI Modem/Nic combo card to be adequate with the appropriate drives. Click here for information on replacing memory or mini pci card.
The Solo 2150 is a breeze when upgrading the optical drive. When purchasing a drive make sure the drives faceplate is flat and straight. Also you do not need to purchase a drive with the caddy just simply use your existing caddy. The Solo 2150 optical drive is held together by two screws on each side and one in the rear. Simple remove these screws, slide the drive away from the rear of the caddy and install your new drive. I've successfully upgraded the Solo 2150 with a DVD, CDRW & CDRW/DVD combo drive using brands such as Toshiba, LG, Panasonic and Teac. Also incase you have some zip disc laying about zip drives are also available for this unit and is used interchangeably with the optical drive.
If the money is available it is possible to upgrade the 12.1" LCD (LP121SA) Version of the Solo 2150 to a 14.1" LCD (LP141XA). The easy way to do this is to remove the lcd along with the palmrest as one piece. This requires removing; keyboard, LCD cable from motherboard and the screws holding the palmrest from the top and bottom of the chassis.
The Original Solo 2150 with the mPGA Intel Celeron CPU is not upgradable beyond a 466MHz mPGA cpu. However,the revivions (version 1.5) is upgradable to an 800MHz mPGA-2 cpu. To get to the CPU you must first remove the keyboard and then the heatsink which will expose the CPU(proceesor).





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SOLO 2500 LAPTOP UPGRADE 
Saturday, March 26, 2005, 12:47 PM
One of the most common use for a laptop is web surfing. However, the amount of memory installed on a laptop will decide how many programs/web pages you are allowed to open at any given time. Too little memory will cause freeze-ups and lagging.

The Gateway website gives two 128MB PC-100 144 PIN SO-DIMM (256MB RAM) as the max combination. However, I have succesfully tested the unit with a combination of one 256MB & a 128MB PC-100 144 PIN SO-DIMM for a total of 384MB MEMORY. The Solo 2500 memory slot is located on the bottom left corner of the laptop. You will need a phillips screw drive to open the memory cover.

So your Solo 2500 needs more storage space. Laptop hard drives can now be found from 6GB to 100GB, anything lower I would not recommend. For the Solo 2500 the maximum hard drive recommended is a 20GB 9.5MM SLIM 2.5 INCH 4200RPM NOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE. Just to give an idea; 1GB of storgae will hold approximately 285 MP3 files. Click here for Solo 2500 hard drive replacement directions.
A DVD upgrade is definetly possible for the Solo 2500. The brand drives to consider are; Toshiba, Torison & Panasonic. Regarding a CDRW/DVD Combo upgrade, I would suggest a 24X CDRW/DVD combo. The drives I have tried are Toshiba SD C-2202/2302 DVD drive
Since the Solo 2500 was never made with a internal modem or ethernet. Upgrading the Solo 2500 with a Modem, Ethernet(NIC) or WI-FI requires purchasing these device in a PCMCIA Card format. Another solution for Modem/Nic is the port replicator which comes with the modem ethernet.


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