M6800 Owners' Thread

This sounds quite fishy. IIRC, the keyboard connects to the mainboard directly? If so, I don't see Dell designing different mainboards just for these keyboard options.

 

I agree with your statement. A bit suss to have a different motherboard just for a different keyboard!

 

i'm going try, backlighted keyboard is under 50 bucks

 

That's completely crazy. At the office we've done a number of replacements from non-backlight to backlight in Latitudes that use the exact same keyboard. The cable is the same.

 

Seems like there are two motherboards and I don't know the difference, one is LA-9781P, the other LA-9782P, I'll do more research

 

I'm not sure but it could be a difference in the display connector, that's usually what the difference is between mobo revisions on Precision.

 

Yeah, most probably so. I think there was a mention a few days ago of this either in this or another thread discussing display upgrade options where the display connector type was changed to eDP on the later revisions or something.

Regarding the keyboard, I remember people upgrading the keyboards to backlit on previous Precisions with no fuss and since it's the same keyboard on the last three models, I'm sure it will work. Can't speak from experience since both my Precisions came with backlit keyboards from the get go (don't see why they bothered to design and produce both, though, except to make a few extra bucks on the upgrade options).

 

Check this page out. It has some sort of descriptions of all the available motherboards for the M6800.

http://www.computer-spare-parts.info/catalog/index.php/cPath/41_572/sort/3a/page/6

 

New 6800 owner. Got it w/o optical as wanted to add BD drive and AFAIK dell didn't offer a BD option for 6800. So bought Matshita UJ272Q SCSI BD drive supposedly for precision series, with square faceplate. Will play blurays, dvds, etc, but won't burn in any format (yes, it is a read & write drive). Bios does not recognize BD drive (Fixed bay devices=....), tho device mgr does recognize it. Imgburn has trouble recognizing any disk I try to burn. Dell tech wasn't much help because of the non-Dell BD. Did a bios update, but still doesn't recognize BD. Win7 64 pro. Suggestions?

 

What does the Device Manager recognize it as? Did you try searching for specific drivers for it? Perhaps it's not recognized correctly with a generic driver.

If that doesn't help, I'd try using it in some other laptop to verify it's not defective.