Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

@jgreve

No Problem with your plan, just put in the bios ahci mode on
install it in the dell and run setup.
then you wont see on every boot screen the raid options..

there are some issues like indexing you better should disable,
here are a lot of howtos found with google,
but its not a big thing at all - just do it ;-)

 

Hmm, interesting. Maybe the M7740 has a better power handling. It certainly has a lower TDP than my FX3700M so I was considering a switch as well (or at least a backup since these Nvidia's are prone to dying after several years). Where did you get it from? They're usually too expensive on ebay.

 

i got mine from ebay for 260 euros with a one year warranty from the seller

 

Any of you is using MyDigitalSSD 128GB msata ssd card?

 

Just trying to get $15 discount so please pardon me for posting once again

 

I'm aware of the outrageous eBay prices; just hoped that you might have some other source.

I'm thinking if the M7820 could fit in the M6400, though. Maybe it would require flashing the M7740 BIOS over it (e.g. like the 6990M was flashed with the M8900 Firepro bIOS to work on the M6600), but I guess it just might work since the cards should be rather similar. Too bad they're not so easy to come by.

 

So far no joy.
I updated the bios to A11, took out the old 500gb pair of disks, put the 310 into the FCM slot, booted into bios config & switched to AHCI, rebooted again. The M6400 bios didn't recognize the 310. I tried the WLAN slot as well; nothing there either.

This was interesting - a guy installed a RENICE MSATA SSD on an M6500: update DELL M6500 with mSATA SSD
On that M6500, the msata showed up in the bios as "Primary Hard Drive: 64gb" (that screen shot is about half way down the web page, by the text "And we set Renice mSATA SSD as primary Drive").
The M6500 bios has some drive options I don't see on my M6400:
Specifically on the under the DIMM slots on bios Settings->General->System Information:
Primary Hard Driver = 64 GB HDD
Secondary Hard Drive = 750 GB HDD
Fixed Bay Device = DVD+/-RW
Minicard SSD Device = 120 GB HDD
System eSATA Device = (none)
Dock eSATA Device = (none)

On my M6400 I thought I would see "Minicard SSD Device = (none)" - instead there is no mention of minicard anything.
Which makes me wonder if, on an M6400, I can get the 310 working plus two additional 2.5" sata devices.

If you have made a 310 work on an M6400, what bios were you using?
And I thought I might see something like "Enable FCM" or "Enable Turbo Boost" in the bios.

At any rate, I'm ordering a regular SATA adapter to verify the 310 actually works. I'd welcome any extra troubleshooting ideas.

 

TBH, I thought the FCM slot on the M6400 is just for those FCM memory cards for Windows caching option.. I never expected it to be a fully functional mSATA slot as it was never mentioned as such. On the other hand, I haven't studied the matter so don't know what are the differences and if they amount only to BIOS support.

It's an interesting matter for M6400 owners anyway so I'm looking forward to any follow-ups.

 

True enough - FCM isn't mentioned much at all in the M6400 online service manual; just this fragment from WWAN CARD
"NOTICE: Insert a WWAN card or FCM only into the slot labeled WWAN/FCM. "
*shrug*
You win some, you lose some.
If nothing else, I'll find a home for the 810 in another laptop with the 2.5" adapter (though it is back ordered at the moment: RN-MSATA-ADPT )

 

I tried a covet C565C battery in a non-covet M6400. It is not recognized. I get warnings in the BIOS and Win7 saying that it is not a Dell battery, cannot charge it, etc. However, CPUID sees the battery and can correctly read its capacities (design, charge, current), etc. My understanding is that the covet model uses precisely the same hardware as the non-covet, so this comes as a surprise. Could it be that my BIOS (A05) is too old to recognize the battery model? Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I have only a weak 90W AC adapter to test it with? I expected the 90W would be strong enough to charge the battery with the unit shutdown, but I would not expect a "non-Dell battery" error due to the use of an insufficient power supply. I'm perplexed. I'm out of ideas, so I'd be grateful for any advice, even speculation. Besides Covet vs. non-Covet, I'm also interested to know about battery compatibility between the M6400 and M6500. Does anyone have any experience with these matters?