Inspiron 8200 Upgrade

Introduction

Mar 9, 2010

My fourth computer related project was to add a little spark to my old Dell Inspiron laptop. The screen had cracked years ago on a cabin trip up north and I really had not used the laptop much sense then.

My goal was to get the laptop back to the point were I could use it for basic web browsing around the house.

System Info

Dell Inspiron 8200

• Mobile Pentium 4 M 2.0GHz
• 512MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM - two SODIMM sockets populated with 256MB sticks
• Mobility Radeon 9000
• Fujitsu MHK2060AT 6.0GB
• Windows XP
• 15.1" Display
• Cirrus Logic CS4205 (on Intel 82801CAM ICH3-M South Bridge)
• 10/100 Fast Ethernet 3Com 3C920
• Mini-PCI Wireless card capable

This laptop is basically a clone of the Dell Latitude C840 and the Dell Precision M50 so a lot of the parts between the three models are interchangeable. However I learned the hard way that not all the LCD panels work with the Mobility Radeon 9000.

Research

LCD Screen

The primary upgrade item on the list was a replacement for the cracked LCD screen. All the research I had seem was that the parts for the Inspiron 8200, Lattitude C840, and Precision M50 were basically interchangeable. New LCD panels were very expensive $200 to $450 so I was definitely going with Ebay as a source for the LCD.I found a complete C840 LCD assembly on Ebay for $45. It included the plastic cover, all bezels, inverter, cable, and LCD panel. It sounded great so I ordered it. However I found out to late it was an IBM 089TXX SVGA+ panel, which was not compatible with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 video card in the notebook. That sucked.I decided to forge ahead and order another panel, thinking I could resell the other one on Ebay. This time I decided to order the same part number and manufacturer panel or at least as close to an identical panel as was possible for $50 or less. The original panel part number was a Sharp LQ150U1LW22 UXGA Ultrasharp pannel. I found a panel listed with the same specs but a slightly different part number LQ150U1LH22B. I think this might be a "B Grade" version of the original panel, which means its functionally ok except they allow a few more dead pixels. The Sharp panel was $55 shipped so I decided to go for it. My backup plan if the Sharp LCD didn't work was to order a lesser video card, the nVIDIA GeForce2 Go 32MB. I figured between two video cards and two panels I should be able to get at least one configuration working.

Video Card

It turns out the video card I had (ATI Mobility Radeon 9000) was the second fastest card available for the laptop, only slightly slower than the nVIDIA Quadro4 700 Go GL 64MB and slightly faster than the nVIDIA GeForce 4 440 GO 64MB. I decided to stick with the card I had, provided I could get a working replacement LCD panel that was compatible.

Memory

I wanted to get at least 1GB of RAM, which I think is the minimum to run Windows XP. The laptop has two SO-DIMM DDR slots available (200MHz or 266MHz) which were currently populated with two 256MB sticks. I wanted two matched 512 MB sticks. It looked like you could put two 1GB sticks in the slots but it was a roll of the dice if they would work or not.

The Dell website had 512 MB sticks listed at $29 each (SNP6G649C/512, Dell Part# A0740382, DDR SDRAM, 333 MHz PC2700 ).

The Newegg memory configuration tool recommended the following: CORSAIR 512MB 200-Pin DDR SO-DIMM DDR 266 (PC 2100) Laptop Memory Model VS512SDS266 - Retail $22.

There were also several vendors on Ebay that had memory listed for Inspiron 8200 for $35 for two sticks (or $17.50 per). On the listing I saw they really didn't have a lot of detail on what brand of memory that was listed. The sites would just say "name brand" and then state "including but not limited to..."

I ended up buying the new sticks from Newegg. It wasn't that more expensive and that way I would know exactly what I was getting.

Hard Drive

The original hard drive in the laptop died about 3 years after I bought the laptop. I happened to have a 6GB laptop drive from an MP3 player upgrade. I wasn't expecting much when I put the Dell recovery disk in and fired up the laptop with the recycled 6 GB drive but the operating system installed ok.

However the specs on the drive were somewhat lack luster (4200 RPM, only 6GB) so I was looking to replace the drive also.

There really are not a lot of EIDE drives being made anymore but web searches keep turning up the Western Digital Scorpio 2.5in 80GB ATA-6 Internal Notebook Hard Drive, 5400RPM, 8MB Cache, Model: WD800BEVE. This drive was around $55 at several different vendors.

There was also a 120GB version for $5 more than the above 80GB so I thought what the heck and ordered the bigger drive from Newegg.

One item I forgot to order when I ordered the drive from Newegg was a second 2.5 to 3.5 IDE hard drive adapter. I already had one laying around but I planned on ordering a second one so I could use my desktop's IDE cable to clone the drives. I was also going to look at USB adapters.

Wireless Card