Thread: Dell Studio Hybrid (Installed in vehicle, 12v-24v)

Thanks for the photos! This is great.

Would you be able to take a high resolution photo of where the power button connects to the motherboard? it would be really nice to have the p2140 or the p1900 be able to control the on off state of the computer based on ignition status of your boat or car.

There are tons of adapters out on the market for dell laptops. There are a few drawbacks to using one of those with the dell studio:

1. There is no built in battery on the dell studio. If your cig lighter is ignition switched it will immediately kill power to your PC causing a hard shut down.
2. If your cig lighter is not ignition switched and you forget to turn off your pc you will have a dead battery.
3. No auto shut down (as I mentioned above)

All of these issues are solved by the p2140 and the p1900. (shut down time, low voltage, auto shut down)

Good luck with the install.

Originally Posted by Dan2008

So, if I understand correctly, the p1900 and p2140 send a SIG_POWER to the computer just like a UPS? That's great method.

There are two ways of doing this.

1. p2140/p1900 can act as a switch bringing both pins to ground having the same effect as a standard power button.
2. The p2140 only can send an ACPI power command over the USB bus. This is a new feature and is not supported by all hardware. We have not tested it with the dell studio edition but we have had success with newer hardware in the past.

I used to work @ dell, left before these suckers came out, the power on is a tricky beast. the dimension and optiplex line typically had a ribbon that went from mobo to "i/o panel" aka the front. If we thought the panel was bad, we'd unplug it, and if we were right, the computer would boot right up. This leads me to beleive that the switches are typically normally closed. I'm not sure if this guy is the same or not, since it looks like its all on the mainboard, much like the USFF chassis were.

I have some friends still working @ dell, lemme know if you need more info.

I'm kinda giggling at having seen the Blu-Ray option on that PC. Pretty sure the onboard graphics couldn't play HD on its best day unless Intel really, really got on the ball recently.

Other than that... it's a mITX Intel board - probably the DG45FC - the same thing a lot of folks on this board have for their CarPC already. With a Voom case you could do a better purpose-build and probably beat the price too.

Hm. The DG45FC has a PCIx slot... could put an X-Fi or other sound card in there and blow the onboard away if you have room. Or maybe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161079 a PCIx x1 video card... Gotta be better than Intel's...

I looked at the DG45FC unless Dell get this board modded seriously i would say its not this board. The hybrid doesnt have any sata ports, from the image on the intel site where the stata ports are dell have 2 wireless card slots there, mine has a wireless in one and the other is empty. The internal speaker is also not on the board as well as the battery, so off the top i would say this isnt a DG45FC. I have connected the hybrid up to my hi-def tv 1080i and the video plays fine with a 1920x1080 video, this is a wmv clip though, dont know if this will make any difference but i dont have any blue-ray to test. my intention was not for home theatre but to buy something reliable and not put together by parts bough from all over the place, so the hybrid was my answer after trying out a packard bell easynote xs notebook, the xs was to slow and only had a 30g drive and gave problems when resuming from hybernating, it kept loosing the usb devices and a restart had to happen to detect them again. So far the hybrid has behaved, a quick test the outer pins on the power are 19.6v and the center looked like it was a ground, i connected the center pin and the positive of the poweer jack and got a reading of about 12v. Need to sit down and realy do some testing to see what power i require as the standard dc-dc convertor i have does not power the device to the stage that windows starts, the hybrids lights up and then swithces off again doesnt even go past the post screen (dell logo)
Will get more pics as requested and keep everyone posted.

Some pics showing the power switch and cable, not very good at taking pictures as you can see.
The cable is a little 4 pin plug, 2 go to the light on the power switch the other 2 are for the switch itself.
These 2 wires are yellow and grey i put a tester and pushed the switch to see if it closed the circuit and it did, so this is like any normal pc switch that when the button is pressed it closes the loop.

I also discovered what the second mini pci slot is for, it is marked BD so i am presuming that when you order the blue-ray option this is where the BD decoder board goes as well as the swap out of the player itself

Can you see a part number on there for the four pin connector?

I assume carnetix would make a 1"-2" female to male cable with a 'splice in' that would connect to the carnetix. That way the power of the dell studio would either be controlled by the ignition status or the button.

Is there a hole in the back that you could run that wire through or would you need to drill something?

Havent got the machine open anymore but can open and check for the part number. In the pic it looks like there is a part number sticker on the actual cable, would i be right in saying you want the part number for the cable side with plug or the plug on the actual board itself. Should be pretty easy as Dell seem to put part numbers and Rev tags on nearly everything they make.
The machine itself has some sort of airflow grooves or openings on the front so should be easy enough to run a cable through without having to drill