New M6500 Discussion Thread

Lucky you EdgeDC, I have gone down the path you are about to embark and have managed to gather those answers that you seek...

 

Oh OK, that's cool. I'll give it a try then. I guess it would be better to have 32GB so I can run a bunch of virtual machines or something (I'll probably buy VMware Workstation for that).

Good news and bad news. The good news is that I can validate that the part worked, so the 0FW67Y part is exactly the same ON Flash part for both the (compatible) Latitude and Precision lines. The bad part? Despite what the "Installing your Dell Latitude ON Flash Card" PDF says from the Dell site, that the ON Flash card can be installed in either the FCM slot or the WWAN slot... it only works in the FCM slot. This is a deal breaker for me because although I don't plan on setting up WWAN access (I don't really need it and don't want another monthly payment to a mobile phone company), but I plan to use the FCM slot for an mSATA drive.

However, with the ON Flash installed in my FCM slot, it worked perfectly. I upgraded the firmware on it, and I was able to configure it with the Windows config utility. Note though - the device is very short, and the FCM slot is long... so you'll either want to obtain the little adapter bracket or rely on electrical tape to keep the card pinned down.

That's awesome! Just buy the parts and slap them in huh? I did do a little searching last night and I found two separate parts for the fingerprint sensor part - FRNJN, as you suggested... and Y4J2T. They appear different - FRNJN is a little "swipe" strip, Y4J2T is the size of a full fingerprint, which I'm pretty sure is the FIPS-compliant version. I wonder if one works better than the other? If they both work just as well as each other, I'd lean towards the full finger / FIPS model, personally - it just seems cooler.

Thank you DynamiteZerg! Much appreciated.

(BTW I would have preferred the username Edge - my nickname since grade school (it's part of my last name), but it was already taken. )

 

New development - I just received installed the C205N adapter from eBay, installed it in the UWB slot... and it's being recognized in the BIOS like this:

• Bluetooth Device = {none}
• Wireless UWB Device = Installed

Did I buy the wrong adapter? As I understand it, there's very little support for Wireless UWB out there.

EDIT: Confirmed... yep, the C205N adapter is the Wireless UWB (aka Wireless USB) adapter. I even successfully installed the "Dell Wireless 420 UWB Half Minicard Application" drivers from the Dell website (R251606.exe), which performed a firmware update on it and installed the proper Windows drivers.

I am now the proud owner of a perfectly working Wireless UWB adapter which has absolutely no useful purpose (since the standard is now defunct)! LOL

I don't suppose that you or anyone else has the proper part number for the Bluetooth adapter? It would help if I order the right thing this time. I did a search on "Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth" (based upon the listed M6500 drivers on the Dell site) and came up with part number RM948, but it looks completely different than the mini-card I expected... it's a little strip! I also found elsewhere in this thread that people mentioned the "Dell Wireless 370", but that looks very different too, and too long for the UWB slot:

Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth


Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth


EDIT #2: ...aaaaand I just discovered this gem on page 91, post #906. Now to figure out how to access it! The service manual isn't much help.

 

I was thinking of sticking it in the WPAN slot... can you give it a go to see if it works? If it doesn't work, looks like I might to sacrifice the FCM slot. Damn I was hoping the WPAN or the WWAN would work!

Go for whichever one you like. Works pretty much similar.

No worries. At least I can help someone instead of them running around in circles.

 

Did your M6500 not come with Bluetooth? It is pretty much a default setup for most M6500.

There is little support out there for Wireless UWB, it is pretty much dead in the water.

You have the right part number, RM948, for the Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth used in the M6500. As you have found out, it lives under the LCD cover. The manual will tell you how to get the LCD cover off. It is not hard.

The Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth card is for the M6400. I have one spare Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth card, how about I trade it for your Wireless UWB card plus I top you $1?

The only way you can get Bluetooth v4.0 on the M6500, is to get the 7260ac+Bluetooth v4 WLAN card. It will install fine and work fine, for the WLAN side of things, but getting the Bluetooth to work is the tricky bit.

 

I remember that on my M6400 (with Windows 7) and the 410 card, the Bluetooth was actually not functioning well if you install the only available 410 UWB drivers which were for Vista IIRC. I did replace it with the 370 which functioned flawlessly; only later I remembered that if you install the 370 drivers on the 410 device, the Bluetooth part would work well (the WUSB part is useless anyway).

Too bad the FCM slot doesn't support mSATA devices on the M6400

 

What is this 410 card you talked about? What's the part number?

Found it... MT361

 

Edge,

You need this for your Latitude ON card! Half Mini Pci-e Card | eBay

 

In the name of science (and helping a fellow M6500 owner who has already helped me a bunch), I tried this today. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to report that my M6500 completely ignored the Flash ON card when it was installed in the WPAN slot. It seems like it's FCM or nothing for the Flash ON feature. Bummer, huh?

OK, I'll go ahead and order the FIPS one then... and the connection cable (thank you!)... ironic that the cable costs more than the button bar, at least on eBay at the moment.

No, it didn't. It seems that all Covet M6500s came standard with the Bluetooth module (probably because of the edge-to-edge glass screen - harder to crack it open), but not the regular silver models. It was an option. Some companies don't allow Bluetooth anyway (mine doesn't) for security purposes, as Bluetooth is not a particularly secure wireless protocol.

Yeah, I know. It kinda sucks... but it's still kinda cool to have it now that I do. $32 down the drain - too much hassle to return it, but when I said I was aiming for "fully loaded" I wasn't kidding!

Awesome, I ordered it! It's just the two screws at the bottom of the bezel (behind the little black discs) and that's it, right?

Haha - nice try. Yeah, I don't want to mess with compatibility issues, so I'm accepting that I won't have Bluetooth 4.0 on this laptop, and considering I have the Intel 6300 WLAN card, with full 802.11a/b/g/n support, I'm not too upset about not having 802.11ac. It would be nice, but no biggie.

Haha well - if I was going to continue to use the ON Flash card, I would definitely buy a bracket to mount it properly! You should order one, if you haven't already.

Back onto the memory... I found memory from one of the quality suppliers that is PC3-14900 (DDR3-1866) at 10-10-10-30 timings. I wonder if putting that in the M6500 would scale back to 1666Mhz speeds, maybe even at CL9? I guess it's worth a shot... it's the same price as the DDR3-1666 memory at CL9.

Off to order more parts.

 

So that sucks... looks like my plans are down the drain and I have to choose between the mSATA card or Latitude ON!

Just be careful about the cable. It is pretty fragile especially around the two ends. You will know what I mean when you are trying to connect the cable to the FIPS reader.

Ok, now I see why your M6500 has no Bluetooth. Yes to remove the LCD front bezel, you need to remove the two black discs covering the screws and pull the bezel out in the correct manner.

Well, it was worth the shot in the dark!

Oh yes, be careful about selecting the rams. You need to make sure the rams supports 1.5V just to be on the safe side. Only the 4th generation of i7/i5 uses 1.35V ram. I bought 4 sticks of Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1866 CL10 and they work fine on my M6500. They support both 1.5V and 1.35V.

To answer your question about ram speeds, well the short answer is no. Regardless of what rams that you stick into the M6500, once you exceed 2x8GB, it will run the rams at DDR3-1333. That is unless the rams that you put in is slower than DDR3-1333 then it will default to that slower speed.

I just had a check with mine using CPU-ID. The Crucial rams are now running at DDR3-1333 CL8 at 8-8-8-23 timings sweet!