New M6500 Discussion Thread

So I was doing a "spring cleaning" at my place just the other day, and I stumbled across the extras (manual, CD, etc) that came with the Latitude ON Flash card that I bought 3 years ago, and lo and behold I discovered the OEM bracket for the mini-card anyway. Since it's nice to know OEM part numbers, for posterity the part number of that Dell spacer bracket (to convert a half-length mini-card to fit a full-length slot) is 370FX. However, if you end up ordering the ON Flash card (FW67Y), it probably will include the bracket anyway (at least if you order from Dell like I did).

While I'm still waiting for my mSATA drive (taking much longer than I wanted it to - NewEgg is being painfully slow), I decided to install it back in my M6500 to play with it. It's kinda neat, but it won't save as much battery as the full ARM-based ON devices will, since it still uses your CPU & GPU, even though it bypasses your hard drive(s). Also, the built-in web browser appears to be based upon an outdated version of Firefox, and of course you can't update it... so there will be some limitations to using it, but at least it's "secure" in the sense that your hard drives will not be accessed while using it.

Speaking of OEM part numbers, I was thinking it would be good to start an "Dell M6500 OEM part number list" for reference by all M6500 owners who are looking for parts and need to know what to buy, especially since most M6500s are no longer under warranty. Does that sound like a good idea? I've been keeping track of all of the ones I have come across so I could get the ball rolling and update/edit it as more are discovered/reported. The other question is - should I put it in this thread or start a new one in the "Dell Latitude, Vostro and Precision" forum?

 

That's a good idea! It must be a place where everyone can see it straight off, instead of having to constantly dig around.

The problem with big long threads is, most of the info we are after are buried somewhere in it. So might be a good idea to start a wiki of sorts perhaps?

I'm also looking at setting up a virtual machine too. Let me know it went for u Edge.

 

I'll definitely get it going when I have time to devote to it - you can help me add to it. I am curious though - does anyone know exactly what Blu-Ray drive was provided by Dell if the M6500 was bought with that option? I'm really curious to know exactly what it was, and having a hard time tracking any solid info down (part numbers, model numbers).

I did end up buying myself a new Panasonic UJ267 slot-load 9.5mm drive on eBay - problem is that it doesn't come with the bezel / faceplate, and although I could transfer the one from my DVD drive, I don't think the eject button would work on it as the UJ267 does not have an eject button - at least not in the same place. It seems the UJ267 is designed to only be on a bezel-less and eject-button-less design, such as Apple MacBooks. So I'm now leaning towards buying the Panasonic UJ262 instead (tray-load), since it comes with a bezel / faceplate. If I do that though, I want guarantees it is a recent manufacturing build with current firmware, and none of the eBay listings can guarantee that.

As for virtual machines, I have decided on Windows 7 and VMware Workstation, although I have not bought it yet as I haven't even built the OS yet. All of my hardware (except the stuff directly from Dell (docking station, battery, extra power supply) - go figure) has arrived, now I'm just trying to recreate the Dell Diagnostics partition on the new SSDs, because I want to have that there.

(Side note - the M6500 mSATA behavior is WEIRD in that it won't work at all without a drive installed in the regular / primary slot. Also, I had to swap my two SSDs between primary and secondary to get everything to work, but they are supposedly identical drives - bought from the same vendor at the same time. Very strange! ...but I got it working - all 3 drives showing up with 1000 GB each)

How are things going on your end? Crucial Ballistix memory arrived and working?

 

I will go for a tray load like the UJ262 or Panasonic BDR-UD02. They might or might not come with a bezel/faceplate, depending on the seller, but you can use one of those generic bezel/faceplate on them! Like this or this. For the former, it will fit both the drives I have mentioned. For the latter, you need to let the seller know which bezel/faceplate you are after.

I have both and they work great! The Panasonic works out to be cheaper though, not sure why.

Ok, since I'm on Windows 7, I will go down the VMware Workstation path as well. Will get a friend of mine, who is an expert user, to help me along.

As for the weird SSDs... that's first time I have heard about it too! Wow, 3TB of pure SSD wonder! I'm on a different path here. 240GB Crucial M500 mSATA as the main/bootup drive plus 2 1TB Hitachi 7K1000. Might stick my spare 1TB to replace the Blu-Ray writer.

Oh, thanks for reminder! I have been so busy the past week or two, I have forgotten about the Crucial rams! Just placed an order with express delivery, can't wait to get my hands on them!

 

Hey Edge,

Thanks for heads up on the Crucial Ballistix rams! The 4 sticks of 8GB 1600MHz rams work at 1600MHz! Love the 9-9-9-24 settings too~ Sweet!

Pictures to come later!

My guess is the M6500 prefers XMP settings over JEDEC ones.

 

I need some help members. I went and bought the Dell Wireless 5630 Gobi3000 WWAN card for the M6500. Did not get around to installing it until recently.

Got it installed with a bunch of other hardwares for the M6500 and everything went smoothly. That is until I tried to install the drivers and utility for the 5630!

The installers for both the drivers and utility contains a sort of whitelist. If the system is not in the whitelist, it will abort the install and return an error.

I have managed to find drivers from a guy who extracted it out from the MSI file and the drivers installed correctly. However, I am unable to get the utility program to install. Without it, I am unable to establish any sort of connection to the mobile network.

I tried to work on the MSI file using Orca. At first I managed to bypass the whitelist for the utility installer, and everything 'installed and completed successfully' or so I thought. When launching the utility program, all it gives is a blank window.

Need any help I can get to get the utility software installed so that I can start using the WWAN card.

 

Ok, I have figured out how to get the drivers and utility software of the 5630, from the M6700, to install perfectly on the M6500. I can make them install on any recent Dell laptops which supports WWAN mini-pcie cards but not white listed in the setup installation. If anyone needs help, just let me know!

No more more script errors etc and everything works like it should in the M6600/M6700!

 

Edge,

Did you managed to setup your mSATA as the boot drive?

 

Need some help from any owners of the M6500 with a mSATA as the boot drive and with the system partition on the mSATA as well.

I bought a Crucial M500 240GB mSATA drive and attempted to use it as a boot drive for my M6500. Before I started, I have set up the BIOS to have SATA to AHCI and the mSATA as the solo boot up device.

Here are the results I got:

1) With just the mSATA drive installed, I get the boot screen but is unable to get into the BIOS setup or get into the device boot up selection menu. Once it gets pass the boot screen it will just show a blinking cursor at the top left hand corner of the screen and stay that way.

2) With the mSATA and primary HDD slot filled, everything works fine. The problem occurs when I attempt to install Windows 7. The Windows setup will create a system partition on the primary HDD instead of on the mSATA.

3) With the mSATA and secondary HDD slot filled (primary HDD slot is empty), things seemed to work. In this case, the Windows setup will not create any system partition. It will allow Windows 7 to install onto the mSATA drive. However, upon reboot, the M6500 is unable to find any bootable device.

Are the problems due to the firmware on the Crucial M500? I will attempt to update it to the latest firmware release on 25/3/2014 to see if it helps. My M6500 is on latest A10 firmware.

Any help is appreciated!

 

Hi DynamiteZerg,

I am running the same setup:

M6500 w/ i7
Crucial M500 mSATA / 240MB
Crucial 32GB RAM / (4x8GB)

My system is using the mSATA as the soul boot drive. Meaning, I do not have any other drives in the bay(s), only the DVD-ROM. Depending on my data needs or project; I do install and use a 2nd or 3rd SATA drive, while still booting from the mSATA.

FYI: When I use the AHCI controller setting, I get the exact behavior you articulated in the original post. The "trick" to getting things to work is:

a) Upgrade the BIOS to A10.

b) Set the controller to RAID.

c) Under boot sequence: move the mSATA up as the "first." boot device.

*d) the M6500 is a fussy beast, so consider removing your other SATA hard drives until you have everything working. To be clear, only have your DVD ROM and mSATA module installed.
(Once you are done, you can reinstall your drive(s) and they will show as D: & E: & F: (DVD drive) respectively.)

*e) It is also a good idea to upgrade the firmware on the Crucial M500 (i.e. MU05) as well to ensure the maximum compatibility.

Note: Although you are using the RAID setting, do not STRIPE, RAID-0, RAID-1, etc. just use it as a normal controller. This will allow you to boot from the drive of your choice by changing the boot order in the BIOS.

If all goes well, you should now be able to load your OS by booting from the CD (F12 on boot-up). Tip: once the OS starts to load, consider deleting all of the partitions on the mSATA and doing a "clean" install. I have two mSATA modules and this process successfully worked for both Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro.

Hope that helps....