JadeRover

I see 2 solutions: Custom interposer board + LCD cable Using the stock DC cable, one must design a simple interposer board that has an eDP female port connected to the OEM DC cable + retraces the signals to a 40 (or 30) pin standard eDP female connector + use an off the shelf 40 (or 30) pin eDP cable to connect to the LCD (many can be found on Aliexpress) CONS : sourcing a 40 pin female eDP connector (connecting to OEM DC cable) of the interposer board + sourcing a OEM DC cable PROS : much simpler to get a custom PCB made than a custom LCD cable Custom direct LCD cable Create a custom 50 pin to 40 (or 30) pin eDP cable as discussed before CONS : sourcing a 50 pin female LCD port connector used on the 8770w motherboard + getting a company in china to build such a cable PROS : only sourcing one old stock part, the connector

Hello, yes that 8570w cable is different to the 8770w cable, the pinout in your message is correct. You know that eDP cables are coaxial ? They have an inner core wire + insulation + outer ground wire + insulation, all in one cable. They are EXTREMELY hard to work with if you solder by hand, possible but very very hard, very fine soldering + microscope + tweezers are needed. In the factory they are soldered by laser machines, ordering a custom cable is also manufactured this way. Ali cable isn't the end solution, the best solution in my eyes is to ordering a custom cable, or finding the 50 pin male connector + 40 or 30 pin male eDP connector and making the cable by hand (you can by a spool of micro coaxial cable for cheap) The cable is probably a clone since manufacture date of 2019 is 8 years after the laptop release. It probably works fine. Yes if you want a dreamcolor display to work you need an interposer board, but be careful : signals coming from the motherboard to interposer are eDP signals leaving the interposer and going to the display are LVDS The Dream Color display is a very rare IPS display using high bandwidth LVDS signals, that is why they needed eDP (high bandwidth), converted it to high bandwidth LVDS and then send it to the screen. The confusion comes from the fact that the laptop sees this display as "eDP" since it has to send eDP signals to drive the display, the reality is that it sends eDP -> gets converted to LDS -> LVDS display. The cable doesn't "convert" or "talk", that is done thanks to the chip on the interposer board. A full DreamColor display assembly has : Motherboard to interposer "eDP" cable Interposer board converting eDP -> LVDS Interposer board to LCD "LVDS" cable DreamColor IPS display that uses LVDS signals. Hope this clears things up for the Dream Color technology ! this is the same for dell precision also using the DC screen.

Hello, Good job, yes this pinout matching is correct. However I would actually wire this to a 40 pin eDP connection with 4 lanes of eDP because that way you can wire the screen up to nicer 1440p and 4k displays with high refresh rate, if you so chose to. If you want a 30 pin screen you can pick up a very cheap 40 pin to 30 pin eDP converter flex cable such as this one, that way you can make these 40 pin cables in bulk and end users can decide to get one with 30 pin converter or not depending on if they want to use a 30 pin or 40 pin display. If you want to make a custom 30 pin eDP cable then the 2 unused lanes should not be connected to anything, just let them terminate on the 50 pin LCD port on the motherboard -> cut the extra unused cables directly on the port.

Hi, did you try on a desktop card ? I tried on a GTX 1060 3gb card but the card gave error 43 with the custom vBIOS. For now the vbios editor project is on hold because I have studies to attend, during December break I'll take a look once more. I need to fix up some errors in the code as I know that the program fails to calculate checksum when there is a GOP or ROM structure (not sure) at the end of the vbios file. I got a P3000 Engineering Sample (that had this problem) vbios to work by manually editing the checksum -> Now it works in my M6700, without manual edits I had error 43, so the problem might be similar with desktop GPUs. Current road map : Add ability to modify display tables -> set eDP on one of the card's ports and vice versa Fix checksum calculation Pascal desktop true compatibility ?

Wow that is a high price! Best price to performance MXM-A in my mind that is the quadro T1000 (GTX1650), they come from HP mini z2 G5. They are in the 75 euro to 125 range (if you can find it). T2000 variant of the card also exists, close to GTX1650 ti. They have a different dimension to MXM-A but they usually slot in just fine. If you want great performance you should get the RTX4070m, it is rare but worth it. 4 times the price, 4 times the performance more or less according to 3D mark.

Your mobo is a 50 pin (LVDS + eDP) COMBO connector it is quite rare, usually laptops only expose either LVDS or eDP per connector, the 8560w, 8570w, 8760w and 8770w have this dual mode connector. This is the schematic of a 8770w (because 8570w schematic is unavailable), it has the same 50 pin connector (different pinout from the 8570w BUT still the same function) : See pins 39 to 50 : they contain 4 lanes of DP (4x2 differential pairs) + 1 aux pair + DP HPD pin, to change a DP into a eDP you need two extra signals : backight on + backlight PWM that is also present on the connector INV_PWM (backlight inverter PWM) -> it is used by the dGPU when driving an eDP display LCM_3S_BKLTEN -> Backlight enable signal These two signals are universal between LVDS and eDP displays. Here are the first 40 pins of the 50 pin LVDS + eDP connector of the 8570w (just so you can see that this connector also contains LVDS signals as well as DP signals just in a different order) : ... All this to say that if you want a 30 pin or 40 pin eDP display connected to your 8570w, you need a custom LCD cable that only uses the DP lines + backlight signals from the motherboard's 50 pin LCD "COMBO" connector. Also this custom cable should contain other HP signals for LID closed and LOGO light that go through this 50 pin LCD connector. This custom cable will terminate in either a 30 or 40 pin male IPEX connector that is required to plug in to a 30 or 40 pin eDP display. Therefore doing this will allow you to upgrade to 4K60Hz+ IPS displays or even Mini LED displays just like it was done here on the 8770w : TLDR : To accomplish this upgrade you need : Custom LCD cable that connects directly to the display, no DC board needed or any other type of signal converter board 40 pin eDP display

Hello, in my experience with the precision 7710 and 7720, bios that fix the plundervolt vulnerability disable the overclocking menu in Smokeless, also these bios re-enable your CPU lock registers (CFG and overlclocking) each time you reboot meaning you have to go back in Smokeless to renenable them in order to undervolt. For the precision 7540/7740 the newest bios that doesn't have the plundervolt fixes is 1.3.3 from september 2019. To downgrade to that bios you must use this : https://github.com/vuquangtrong/Dell-PFS-BIOS-Assembler Once downgraded go into the Dell bios -> Security -> UEFI capsule update -> disabled That way you don't get an automatic update to the latest bios. However if you have a newer bios, like the latest one from dell, and that you don't mind reneabling CPU CFG and CPU Overclocking lock each time you reboot to get undervolt back, you can use the variables offsets (I personally use a grubx64.efi USB key) from the attached file that is extracted from the latest 1.45 precision 7540/7740 bios. In the attached file there are still the options for "Memory Overclocking Menu". You can also attempt to just enable the overclocking menu bit and maybe the entire menu will show up in Smokeless again (this is unlikely though as the overclocking performance menu still contains variables but no UI in the 1.45 bios) : File_DXE_driver_Setup1.45 IFR.txt

It's the only Coffe lake + MXM laptop that has a 2.5inch drive bay + Optical disc drive 🤪 I'll have to try an EDID mod, I will soon (1 month) get my hands on a zbook 15 g3 + T1000 MXM, since the zbook has eDP on DP_C and T1000 has it on DP_D, it will be useful to try this out.

Ah, my bad I confused DP redriver/retimer with DP demuxer 😅 Nice example with that (zbook 17 g5 ?) schematic, what I mean't to say previously is that I have never seen a demuxer output fed into the eDP connector on the motherboard. So you are saying that the redriver might be interfering with the EDID i2c communication ? It seems that the one you found is listening to the GPU communication and then adapting it's signal filtering & gain based on the DP signal speed, the rest is probably passthrough between the LCD EDID and the GPU aux wires. EDIT : here is the awesome post that has useful links for EDID hacking that I used on my DC m6700 to get 10bit color depth to work :

This is very interesting. I had never thought of modifying the EDID of the panel to ensure compatibility but this is a good idea. Aren't these used to split a DP+/DP++ signal into DP and HDMi or DP and DP ? On all schematics I have seen, DP redrivers are never used for eDP connections, only mux switches between CPU eDP and GPU eDP. A good test would be to flash the EDID of the internal LCD with a standard DP display instead of eDP. I had done such a modification to the EDID of my Dream Color display inside my M6700 to enable 10 bit color depth, without this mod, the display couldn't be set to 10 bit color depth.

Yes, that is why a backlight mod will work, eDP = DP + backlight pins + firmware to control the backlight signals Did you manage to repair the M17x r3 motherboard ? It looks to have a lot of liquid damage, nothing impossible to fix, I assume you are already well based in SMD motherboard repairs. Usually water damage kills resistors and it can disable power stages by messing up pull up/down signals which is annoying to diagnose.

There shouldn't be any other problems, the usual nvidia driver modification must be done on windows to use the GPU and you will be all set. If it's okay with you can you tell us the price for the A2000 and pro 2000 ? It would be nice to know.

I would say yes, if the MXM interface of these cards is the standard one. You might need to watch out for the heatsink screw holes + these cards probably have a beefy VRM on the right side of the card (m2X00m) cards have only 2 inductors, these might have 4 or 5 so heatsink modification might be required. Just like the RTX4000 MXM-A series of cards that X-vision sells Here is an M2200 : and here is the 4070 MXM Also what is nice is that you can use a 4K or 4K dreamcolor LCD with the zbook 15 g3 and still keep the integrated graphics to drive the LCD. Might be worth the upgrade to utilize the extra GPU power since the 6th gen CPU you have will limit FPS regardless of display resolution.

Hello, I am interested in buying out broken MXM laptops. I have good knowledge of motherboard repairs so I can attempt repairs. Either in complete or incomplete state Price to be discussed based on the system + the state + the components Currently I am interested in Dell precision M4800 and M6800 Also interested in precision 7520/7720, zbook 17 G4 zbook 17 g5 and zbook 17 g6. I am in France/EU so EU shipping is the most worth while. Also any other broken workstation/powerfull laptops without an MXM slot I am interested in buying. Thanks, have a good one.

They do not, that was the case on 8570 and 8770 G5 and G6 (probably G4 too) have eDP on DP_D position of MXM slot, G1, G2 and G3 have eDP on DP_C so either a custom vbios is required to get picture on screen or a backlight cable mod. All zbooks have only eDP display connections. 17 g1 and 17 g2 have an eDP to LVDS converter on the display cable because they used LVDS displays, the GPU will read the display as eDP however.