Eee PC

This is the Asus Eee PC 701 4G ultra-portable computer releases in the fall 2007. It features a 7-inch widescreen display and 4 GB Solid State Drive (SSD) as the boot drive.

My Eee PC

Pearl white ordered from Qbit Online in Taiwan
Model: 701-W0002 - Chinese/US keyboard
Serial: 7BOAAQXXXX (first 6)
Motherboard rev: 701
Battery: 5200 mAh
No Mini-PCIe connector

Specifications

Dimensions:

Width: 22.5 cm
Depth: 16.5 cm
Height: 2.1-3.5 cm
Weight: 920 grams

Research

Chips and Connections

A simple diagram showing the major chips and connections on the motherboard.

Front:

Back:

Solid State Drive

The solid state drive on the Eee is powered by a Silicon Motion SM223 CF flash card controller and 4x NAND flash chips from various manufacturers.

NAND flash found:

Hynix 8Gbit HY27UG088G5M
Intel 8Gbit 29F08G08CANB2 (found on mine)

BIOS Chip

For a little while there was confusion how the BIOS was stored. Speculation about parts of the SSD could be used for the BIOS, integrated chipset BIOS, or a unknown IC-chip.

Turns out the BIOS chip was covered by a adhesive label and the part number is Winbond 25X40VSIG. It features a 8-pin 512K serial flash.

Overclocking

CPU frequency (FSB x multiplier): n/a
Front-Side-Bus frequency (quad-pumped bus rate)): n/a
Bus speed: n/a

Benchmarks

Accessories

Logitech Nano Mouse
Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook 5000 / 4000
LG GSA-E50L Slim DVD Writer

Internal Upgrades

USB hub

To install devices internally, more USB-connections are needed. I hooked into one of the regular USB-ports and routed the D+/D- signals from the southbridge/controller to a 4 port USB-hub. To make the port I hooked into work again, one of the 4 ports is connected back to the USB-port (Hub-to-USB-port and USB-port-to-HUB).

I installed 2 hubs this way to get enough ports and load balancing the bandwidth. Having two storage devices on the same upstream connection is not a good idea speed-wise.

The reason I choose to hook into the USB-port and leave the spare Mini-PCIe USB connection alone is that I want to:

Be able to use Mini-PCIe cards based on USB later
Disable the USB-ports in BIOS and disable all the new devices
Not have the devices disabled if I used the webcam or wifi connections

More information about USB hubs over at Wikipedia.

GPS with antenna

Bluetooth 2.0+EDR

SDHC card reader

Pendrive

Power switch

Integrated: Webcam, Wifi PCIe adapter, SD card reader, Sound card, Atheros eithernet, Atheros Mini-PCIe adapter
USB hub: Bluetooth, SD card reader, GPS adapter, FM transmitter

Modem

The modem port on the Eee is stuffed with a piece of black foam and not used. The modem is not installed on any Eee machine but the internal connection points are still there. The modem card connected via a MDC v1.5 connection, and 12 pin header for the card and the 2 pin header to connect to the RJ-11 jack is still in place on all current 4G motherboards.

Asus is still providing the Windows driver for the Conexant 56K modem on their download site, look for Modem_XP.zip

The modem card can be found on various Dell, Acer, and Sony laptops. On Ebay the Conexant card can be found under these model numbers:

Conexant 56K Modem RD02-D110
M5804 (Dell part number)

Wifi

The wifi-card on the Eee is only 802.11b/g, not the latest draft-N. The card is can be easily changed by removing two screws and unmounting the card from the Mini-PCI Express socket.

After searching around I found a Intel 4965agn 802.11a/b/g/n Mini-PCIe card for a decent price.

Since 802.11n is MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) it requires 3 antennas for optimal performance and range. I had a dead Nintendo Wii which happens to use the same antenna connectors for it's Broadcom wireless-card. The connector type on the Intel card is Hirose U.FL-R-SMT and on the antenna U.FL-LP-066.

Other Possible Internal Upgrades

USB relay power switch
New keyboard (non-taiwanese) [2]
FM transmitter
CPU/GPU/Chipset voltage mod
Silicon Motion NAND flash replacement
Modemport - Wifi antenna, additional ethernet port
Modemport as a switch - remove to turn off, plug in to power

BIOS Revisions

Official Asus Eee PC ftp directory: USA Taiwan Asus Update Utility Eee PC directory: Asus.com

Newer releases last, sorted chronologically.

Tools:

8804

Download
Bios date 2007-07-25, initial release
Available via Asus Update
Full 100 MHz FSB
Chip report as an Intel I915GM rather than Intel I910GML
Wireless and screen flickering problems reported

0302

Bios date 2007-10-10
FSB lowered to 70 MHz

0204

Download
Bios date 2007-10-05
Fixes USB2 and webcam problems

0401

Download
Bios date 2007-10-17
Fix sometimes password is requested when entering setup

Optimize Windows XP

Linux Hardware Output

Output [3]:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 04)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5007EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Technology Corp. L2 100 Mbit Ethernet Adapter (rev a0)