Swapping Laptop Displays

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movax

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Aug 12, 2005
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I received a Dell Latitude D600 for free recently, and one thing that I can't tolerate right now is the low-resolution screen. A member in FS/FT is selling a screen from a Dell 600m...the plugs on both LCDs seem to be identical.

I don't think they change motherboards when you bump up to a higher-res panel, so I should simply be able to drop this in?
 
The D600 manual had a nice Mini SRL page, that listed Part #s for each of the components, but the other 600m manual didn't.:(

Looks like they'll match up though, connectors seem to be the same luckily.
 
The d600 and 600m are pretty much the same notebook. Difference is that the top plastic part(palm rest) and display housing are different. The d600 also has a eraser head in the keyboard. Motherboard, display, etc are all the same. You can also swap the xga screen for the sxga+ screen from what I've read. Shouldn't be an issue.
 
Yep, that's what I'm doing, swapping out the XGA for the SXGA+.

If I really dislike the 600m's display casing, I can use Dell's excellent manual to just transplant the panel.

I might also sink another $30 or so in there to upgrade to a 1.7 Pentium M from eBay. How much more/less performance/battery life would I get from jumping 1.4 Pentium M to a 1.7 (I think that was the fastest Banias). 400FSB really kills my memory bandwidth.
 
movax said:
Yep, that's what I'm doing, swapping out the XGA for the SXGA+.

If I really dislike the 600m's display casing, I can use Dell's excellent manual to just transplant the panel.

I might also sink another $30 or so in there to upgrade to a 1.7 Pentium M from eBay. How much more/less performance/battery life would I get from jumping 1.4 Pentium M to a 1.7 (I think that was the fastest Banias). 400FSB really kills my memory bandwidth.
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Transplant the panel so it looks right. Worth the time. Anyway there were 2 major "revisions" or the d600/600m. The later ones supported pc2700 memory. I have one of the early ones(sxga+ with 64meg video). Well I guess 4 versions if you think of the 32 meg vs 64 meg versions of the boards. Anyway as long as you have an up to date bios that supports the dothan chip the notebook should take the 2ghz 400 fsb dothan. Going from a 1.4 to a 1.7 will not be a big jump but for 30 bucks may be worth it. Just sell the 1.4 after you get it working.

I've had my 600m for like almost 4 years now I think. It has been a while. I've upgraded the ram to 1.5 gigs, new hd, new wireless card(intel 2200 for g wireless) and new batteries. Right now I'm running the dual battery setup and have the dell power adapter that works on ac and dc. Still a great little notebook.
 
Yeah, I think this one has the 64 Meg Radeon 9000 in it. I'd love to upgrade the RAM in it, but I think the 400FSB will really kill performance...don't wanna drop cash on some DDR SO-DIMMs that'll be dead-ended in there. :(
 
movax said:
Yeah, I think this one has the 64 Meg Radeon 9000 in it. I'd love to upgrade the RAM in it, but I think the 400FSB will really kill performance...don't wanna drop cash on some DDR SO-DIMMs that'll be dead-ended in there. :(
Click to expand...

I mean the amd notebooks still use ddr. I just had to order a stick of ddr for a notebook I picked up a few months ago. Just get some pc3200 notebook ram that will step down. You can prob find some 512s kinda cheap if not.

Mine came with 384 because it was a free upgrade. I then dropped a 512 in and removed the 128. A while ago I replaced the 256 with a 1 gig. Thing flys with 1.5 gigs of ram in it.
 
For future googles & forum searches, I'd like to report that the swap went off without a hitch. Just had to remove the side rails from the D600 display and attach those to the 600m's panel so it mounted properly. No problems!

I'd like to end on the note that Dell has a kick-ass R&D dept that does the design on their notebooks, and online service manuals are something that more OEMs for all kinds of products need to do.
 
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