Introduction:

The goal of this project is to take a low cost netbook, in this case the Acer Aspire One AOA150-1706, and upgrade it with a solid state drive, upgraded memory and best of all a Broadcom HD Decoder card.  This should make for a speedy little low cost machine. 
The project will involve total disassembly of the Acer netbook in order to upgrade the hard-drive and RAM.  The Broadcom decoder card will need to replace the existing wifi card since there is only one usable mini PCI-e slot available.  Another mini PCI-e can be soldered on, but this take some special skills in surface mount soldering.

The Patient:
Acer AOA150-1706 specs

• 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 processor
• 160 GB Hitachi 5400 RPM hard disk drive
• 1 GB RAM (512 MB permanent and  512 MB DDR2-5300 DIMM)
• 8.9-inch LCD display
• Integrated webcam
•  3-cell battery with up to 2.5-hours of use
• 54g Wi-Fi LAN (802.11b/g) (mini PCI-e card);
• 10/100 Ethernet; Intel GMA 950 graphics
• Connectivity: 3 USB, 1 headphone, 1 microphone, Secure Digital slot, multi-format memory card slot, VGA monitor output
• Windows XP Home

The Upgrades:

Kingston ssdNow V series 64 GB SATA Solid State Drive model SNV-125-S2BD/64GB

• Max Vibration Resistance 2.17 G
• Power Consumption (Active) 2.0W (TYP)
• Power Consumption (Idle) 0.45W (TYP)
• Sequential Access - Read 100MB/sec
• Sequential Access - Write 80MB/sec
• MTBF 1,000,000 hours

Broadcom HD Accelerator mini PCI-e card (model BCM70012)

• Installed in a mini PCI-e slot.
• Decodes the following formats (per Broadcom web-site)

• H.264/AVC HP at L 4.1 1080p/1080i, 40 Mbps
• SMPTE VC-1 AP at L 3 1080p/1080i, 40 Mbps
• WMV9 (VC-1 SP and MP)
• MPEG-2 MP @ ML and MP @ HL
• QVGA to Full HD (1080p) support
• Streaming Media playback on netbooks/nettops
• Blu-ray disc playback on netbooks/nettops

1 GB DDR2-5300 DIMM memory upgrade. The max memory after upgrade will be 1.5 GB.

Installation:
There are several good sites on how to disassemble the Acer netbook.   Since there are quite a few references are available on the internet, I will just reference the sites.  Please bear in mind that cracking open your computer will void it’s warranty.  Terracode LLC will not be liable for failed attempts at upgrading the PC.  Proceed at your own risk. 

Click here for Disassembly Instructions

Click here for mini PCI-e mod

Disassembly of the netbook was a straightforward process.  Be sure you note where all the screws were removed and work slowly.  I had pictures of each stage of disassembly and taped the screws to the position located on the printout.  This helped prevent loss of the screws and allows easy reassembly so I won’t forget a screw or a step.  Make sure you are being ESD safe such as wearing a anti-static strap. I use an anti-static mat as well.

The installation of the hard-drive and memory was straightforward. The installation of the Broadcom HD Video Accelerator had a crossroad... either solder on a mini pci-e connector into the existing traces on the motherboard or remove the 802.11g Wi-Fi card from it's mini PCI-e slot and install it there. I order and received the mini- pci-e connector and soldering seemed to be a challenge waiting to happen. I did attempt to solder the connector in, but unfortunately was not successful do to the very tight tolerances.

Thanks to a couple of good friends with skills in SMT soldering, they were able to rescue the board by removing the blundered connector install and cleaned the traces of the excess solder. A second attempt at soldering the connector was not in the cards at this time. Plan B was to remove the 802.11g mini-PCI-e card and install the Broadcom card in its place. It would mean I would have to use an external USB 802.11n dongle (Buffalo WLI-UC-GN ultra-compact wireless-N adapter), but it was worth it to see smooth high definition video playback on the netbook.

The picture below shows the Broadcom card installed in the mini PCI-e slot. The 820.11g card's antenna cable was secured to not be in the way. Above the Broadcom card in the picture you'll see the gray Kingston SSD.

The installation of the parts are complete.

Cloning the Original Drive

The Kingston ssdNow kit comes with a full version of Acronis True Image disk cloning software. The original 160 GB hard-drive was installed into an external SATA to USB enclosure. The True Image software was able to do a clone a larger drive to a smaller one if space is sufficient on the smaller drive. The partitions are sized proportionate to the original drive. The process is to boot off the CD, set the origination and target drive and let True Image do the work. It completed fairly quickly.

On boot-up I had to go into Windows Safe mode and disable the old mini pci-e wireless card in hardware device management in Windows. Once this was done the computer booted into Windows XP without issues.

Driver Install

In order to use the Broadcom BCM70012, we needed the driver. The driver packaged with the card I received was for a Dell laptop and may not install due a system check the installer does. I was able to download the HP mini 110 BCM70012 driver (filename SP43723.exe), which installed fine. The Broadcom card was recognized and device manager showed it as active.

Page 2 of this article will look at the performance of the SSD and Broadcom HD Video Accelerator.