Myriam a.k.a. [tnkgrl] decided that the the Averatec 1050 laptop was sorely in need of some Bluetooth and was tired of losing a port to a USB dongle. The AV1050 reports 3 usb ports in the device manager, but only features two external ports. She disassembled the laptop and went looking for the third port. The end result is 2 fully functioning USB ports and internal Bluetooth. There's enough detail in the post you should be able to pull this off with other laptops as well.
2. I just did this to my laptop, works great. You can read about it here: http://tomthegeek.blogspot.com/2005/12/adding-internal-bluetooth.html
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by TomTheGeek
3. girl hackers are hot.
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Tired2
4. Averatec has been doing that with wifi for years.
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Jaspel
5. In the case of the mac bluetooth she has linked, you don't always have to loose the usb connection on the outside. All you need is one of those small usb hubs, the ones that take one port and make them two. Then you cut the traces, solder the input to the hub to the trace, the first output to the bluetooth, and the second output to the usb connector.
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by CDE
6. #6, I considered it, but the Averatec 1050 is a small, light, (and cheap) ultra-portable notebook (10.6" screen) without a lot of space inside. Beyond the space limitations, adding a hub inside in addition to the Bluetooh module would require traces to be cut (to one of the existing 2 USB ports) and would draw more power. I like that this mod can be undone, and I like the 4+ hour battery life of this machine. Besides this hack is quite elegant :) FYI, I dual boot Windows XP Pro and Mac OSX for Intel on this machine.
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by tnkgrl
7. internal bluetooth is cool but would a USB hub work for the more faint of heart?
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by ez
8. Wow... You posted my hack! Thanks :) Since you've misspelled my handle (it's tnkgrl) you're welcome to update this post with my name (it's Myriam). And yes this is proof that there are girl hackers out there too -grin-
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by tnkgrl
11. lol, my dell 4500 says 10 usb ports when only 4 are outside!
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by weirdguy0101
12. Nice work. I should have done something like that with my Media frame, rather than routing a hub back into the battery bay.
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by george
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1. i feel empowered
Posted at 3:09PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by reese