I have a bit of a redneck engineering project going on. I cannot get any helpful advice from the "computer" people as apparently the red-neckery offends their sensibilities.....
We are working to open an office at our shop location. The building is "secured" with a burg system and some cameras, but am highly concerned about theft. In light of that the first run of computer equipment for the shop has been repurposed items and such that I can find on the cheap cheap. One of those is a convertible laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 13 7375 with the Ryzen 5 2500u.
Backstory on this is that I wanted some decoy equipment to put in place to see if it walked off. One of the ladies we work with had (the above) broken laptop and donated it to the cause. It was used as a step by a young child. The touchscreen and lid were destroyed, the chassis bent. I first saw it and thought "dead as disco". Well, it powered on.
The display portion of the screen works but the touchscreen is being pressed thousands of times a second. I was able to safe mode my way to disabling the driver and then further wrote a registry entry blocking the hardware ID of the touch portion of the screen so that it wouldn't re-enable on updates. Seemingly worked well. Did some gluing, did some taping, reformatted the machine and been testing it the past couple of days.
The other night it started throwing errors out of Support Assist telling me that the charging brick/battery/other power issues were ongoing. I found that removal of the display and touch cables took care of that, and further removal of the lid took care of it HAVING to have the lid opened to turn on, due to a hall sensor for lid position. As with modern laptops today, the WiFi cables were run through the lid around the edge. I cracked the lid back open, got those wires out and find that the only way they will get signal is if I route them out the spot where the hinge was and leave them dangling. I am concerned about damage to them and need to find a way to hide, protect, or replace them with something sturdy.
I noted various WiFi antenna that use a couple of small pigtails that would go back to the M.2 key internally. I had considered modifying some pre existing product and/or hoping like hell there is some 3d printed solution that would allow me a bracket which I could then secure/glue into the previous hinge location. Open to any other idea along that line. Pictures or links of would be appreciated, if you are aware of anything.
The computer won't be used as a "mobile" device any longer but I do need for the antenna to be secured to the lowers such that it can be moved without further breaking. Thanks in advance for any off the wall suggestions.
We are working to open an office at our shop location. The building is "secured" with a burg system and some cameras, but am highly concerned about theft. In light of that the first run of computer equipment for the shop has been repurposed items and such that I can find on the cheap cheap. One of those is a convertible laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 13 7375 with the Ryzen 5 2500u.
Backstory on this is that I wanted some decoy equipment to put in place to see if it walked off. One of the ladies we work with had (the above) broken laptop and donated it to the cause. It was used as a step by a young child. The touchscreen and lid were destroyed, the chassis bent. I first saw it and thought "dead as disco". Well, it powered on.
The display portion of the screen works but the touchscreen is being pressed thousands of times a second. I was able to safe mode my way to disabling the driver and then further wrote a registry entry blocking the hardware ID of the touch portion of the screen so that it wouldn't re-enable on updates. Seemingly worked well. Did some gluing, did some taping, reformatted the machine and been testing it the past couple of days.
The other night it started throwing errors out of Support Assist telling me that the charging brick/battery/other power issues were ongoing. I found that removal of the display and touch cables took care of that, and further removal of the lid took care of it HAVING to have the lid opened to turn on, due to a hall sensor for lid position. As with modern laptops today, the WiFi cables were run through the lid around the edge. I cracked the lid back open, got those wires out and find that the only way they will get signal is if I route them out the spot where the hinge was and leave them dangling. I am concerned about damage to them and need to find a way to hide, protect, or replace them with something sturdy.
I noted various WiFi antenna that use a couple of small pigtails that would go back to the M.2 key internally. I had considered modifying some pre existing product and/or hoping like hell there is some 3d printed solution that would allow me a bracket which I could then secure/glue into the previous hinge location. Open to any other idea along that line. Pictures or links of would be appreciated, if you are aware of anything.
The computer won't be used as a "mobile" device any longer but I do need for the antenna to be secured to the lowers such that it can be moved without further breaking. Thanks in advance for any off the wall suggestions.
Comment