The Laptop
A neighbour handed me an old laptop, with an artifacting screen, a crusty mousepad, and a battery that won’t hold a charge. He told me to do with it as I see fit, which usually meant scavenging it for parts, but it turned out to be revival of the almost two-decade-old laptop, a HP Compaq 6530B.
This relic is from 2008, and partially bore a name of a company that no longer exists, Compaq. It’s powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor, clocking in at 2.4 GHz, paired with an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) Accelerator 4500MHD graphics card.
The Issues
It could only boot up with the power brick plugged in, and loaded up into Windows 7. Its 2 GB of RAM seemed adequate, it was a ‘snappy enough’ laptop, for normal usage. The TouchPad, a touch control ‘screen’, spans the width of the body at the base of the screen, and it’s finicky. It houses the volume control, a Wi-Fi toggle, and two other buttons. The Wi-Fi indicator stayed amber, and the volume up button is registering phantom touches.
It’s a 14incher screen, and the artifacts goes away after some time booting up. I suspect it’s the LED, not the GMA chip though. Temperature checks revealed the laptop idling at 45°C-ish, and HD Sentinel showed a healthy 250 GB mechanical hard disk, which only has a 346+ hours lifetime use. The harddisk was split into two partitions, with traces of another Windows 7 install.
There’s a smart card reader, which wasn’t detected, and a fingerprint reader, which I neglected to check under Windows 7, and I couldn’t get it working with Windows 10.
The Specifications
| Product Name | HP Compaq 6530B Notebook PC |
| Product Number | FR054PA |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo P8600
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| Chipset | Hewlett-Packard 30DD
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| Memory | 4096 MB total system memory (2048 MB × 2, dual-channel)
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| Graphics |
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| Display | 14.10″ 16:10, 1280 x 800 pixel, glossy: no |
| Hard Drive | FUJITSU MHZ2250BH G2
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| Optical Drive | TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L633L DVD Writer
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| Network Connectivity |
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| Audio | High-definition audio 1984A
Integrated dual array microphone with camera only
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| Keyboard / Pointing Devices | 31.20-mm (12.28-inch) keyboard with embedded numeric keypad TouchPad only, with 2 TouchPad buttons and vertical scrolling (taps enabled as default)
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| External Media Card | One ExpressCard/54 slot (Not Working) Media Card Reader supporting Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, |
| External Ports |
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| Dimensions | 24.28 x 33.48 x 3.26 cm |
| Weight | 2.41 kg |
| Power | 65-W HP Smart AC Adapter with localized cable plug support (2-wire plug with ground pin, supports 2-pin DC connector) and HP Fast Charge Technology6-cell (Not Working)
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Disassembly
Disassembly was straight forward, the bottom panel has easily accessible window panels to the RAM and Wi-Fi chips, and the hard disk. Unscrewing the keyboard from the bottom allows it to be removed, thus allowing access to the motherboard. One bit I didn’t like was, the RAM has a top and bottom slot. If I wanted to access the top RAM, I need to unscrew the keyboard, and practically dismantle the whole laptop. The bottom RAM is easily accessed by a window panel at the bottom.
Suprisingly, dust buildup in the innards is very little. The vents aren’t choked with dust at all, and it helps with the somewhat low temperature readings of 45°C-ish at idle. Cleanup is easy, and a mandatory re-layering of the thermal paste is done to the CPU, and the thermal pad for the Intel GMA is left alone.
After re-application of the thermal paste, and cleanup of the heatsink vents, and the fan, the temperatures are now hovering at 33°C-ish on idle. Note however, that I first used RealTemp to measure the temperatures. RealTemp shows 33°C on idle, but HWiNFO and Core Temp are recording 5°C more.
The TouchPad is a clip on, and when I first had the laptop, it was already unclipped at the bottom left corner. Apparently it could be taken off, even with the keyboard still screwed on, but it’s easier to take off with the keyboard taken out.
The TouchPad would work flawlessly if left unclipped. Putting it back in place would trigger the volume up button even after paying extra attention to the ribbon cables. Hard touches, pressing or holding certain parts of the keyboard/laptop especially the top right corner would induce phantom touches.
I opted to just put the TouchPad back but not to connect the cables controlling the other buttons, just the power button. No amount of coaxing would make the TouchPad sit flush with the body though.
The Intel 5100 Wi-Fi chip is detected by Windows, but it’s not working, and a physical check revealed one of the pads connecting the antenna has been torn off. I have the exact same Wi-Fi chip from another dead laptop (that also provided the RAM upgrade) but the torn off pad is stuck inside the antenna clip. I figured it’s not worth the trouble and used a Wi-Fi USB dongle instead.
The screen has artifacts when booting up, but it goes away after warming up. The laptop doesn’t freeze up under load, nor does the screen spit out any artifacts after prolonged usage. As such, I’m assuming it’s just the LED screen showing signs of old age. I didn’t bother to check with an external display just yet, though.
The battery is totally dead, and will not hold a charge. After a gap in powering up, the laptop’s BIOS would spews out errors about incorrect time and date, which I think could be fixed with a new CMOS battery (a CR2032 lithium coin cell battery). This particular error, is coded 500, and can be easily ignored.Code error 501 however is more severe, and I can’t access the BIOS when it happened. I upgraded the BIOS from version F.07 (dated 08/12/2008) to F.20 (dated 7/12/2011) and the BIOS became accessible again.
Officially, the laptop’s latest supported OS is Windows 7. Most drivers are installed automatically right off the bat (I’m using Windows 10 22H2 ISO installer) and forced installing devices using the official Windows 7 drivers worked, except for the Bluetooth module, and also the fingerprint reader. The smart card reader is not working too, it couldn’t even be detected under device manager. It could have been defective before I started working on it. I left it in, because the smart card reader daughter board has two USB ports, that I don’t want to lose.
Conclusion
As a basic, low level device, this almost-20-year-old laptop can still perform as long as you’re patient enough to not overload it with too many open windows, or tabs in browsers. Ideally, having an SSD instead of a mechanical drive, and installing more RAM would help, but for what I’m repurposing it (general browsing, documents and a remote device for a headless server), I can’t justify spending more time, or funds to upgrade it even further. It works, and serves its purpose.
If there’s anything I’d like to change or upgrade, it’s getting the battery replaced, but a quick browse, price-wise and availability-wise, is not encouraging. Also, I wished the USB Wi-Fi dongle doesn’t stick out that much. Kept imagining that I’d hit it with my hand and snap the dongle with the connector still embedded in the laptop.
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