mini9_at_restmass_dot_net

1. I really bought my Mini on a whim that I would use it for some writing while I'm on break and my job (I'm a NASA contractor in Houston) kind of frowns on using their computers. I thought that the small form factor and long battery life would be ideal for some short stories and novels that I have been working on sporadically over the past several years. Sadly, the keyboard has pretty much been a deal breaker for me... after a couple of months I just haven't been able to get used to it. I was thinking of selling it (hey, make me an offer!), then I decided to try and put a touch screen on it, for kicks.
2. I take no responsibility for how much or how little you screw up your computer. If you're even reading this, then you're the type of person who is not afraid of voiding your warranty. For the adventurous, the additional pin 36/38 soldering is very tedious... it took me over an hour to finally get it right. If you are unsure, I recommend the easier sacrificial-USB-slot method. It's not like you'll be plugging a lot of external devices into it... kind of defeats the purpose of an ultra portable netbook, right?
   

• Removing the Module Cover
• Removing the Keyboard
• Removing the Palm Rest
• Removing the Display Assembly (be very careful on this step)

• Small Phillips and Flat screwdriver, preferably magnetized.
• Small cup to hold the screws (I know, sounds silly, but I bumped the desk and crap when everywhere. Took me an hour to find all the screws) Some small, thin plastic wedge to aid in popping the display and Palm Rest off. The guy I bought the touch screen from included a little 1 inch plastic thing that looks like a 3 sided guitar pick, but about 5 times thicker.

• Soldering iron suitable for small work.

I set the touchscreen off to the side and just plugged the USB into a slot and ran the driver software provided at http://home.eeti.com.tw/web20/eg/drivers.htm. (NOTE: I used the beta Linux version and have had no problems... and don't forget to run this as root.)
Of course the touchscreen didn't work at first, so I finally figured out the wiring on the USB and touchscreen was wrong. After that tested successfully, I went about installing it. 
In my trail-an-error process to do this, I didn't photodocument some of the steps because I simply didn't have the patience. Most of the pictures you see are taken after I installed it.  Again, refer to Dell's disassembly manuals.

Using my method, the motherboard will have to be completely removed for access to the underside. The biggest disappointment was that I had to sacrifice an external USB slot. Hopefully someone will find the USB hub points to wire this up better. (UPDATE:  Someone did, and I rewired it.  Skip to the end of this article for more info.)

This connects to the USB touchscreen controller (shown on right)...

... and the touchscreen controller (on the left side) to the touchscreen connector leads (note wire colors... so very important!)

The wiring for this messed me up for a while, but in the picture above the wiring is:

• front is yellow-(front top)
• black-(front bottom)
• white-(rear top)
• red-(rear-bottom).

One side of this connector has four grooves: note this for later when you connect the touchscreen.

Now, wrap the whole thing in electrical tape so it won't short out.

At this point I was fortunate that I had the US version since I had plenty of room to put the USB touchscreen controller where the WWAN would go.

Sorry UKers... you'll have to find another place to put it. I think there is enough room to put it somewhere under the palm rest close to the touch pad, similar to where the GPS hack guy put his. Might have to toss out the BlueTooth, though.  Please send me pictures and I'll update this howto.

Route the wiring however you'd like, but take care that you have the room when you screw the motherboard back down to the chassis. For this particular touchscreen, the lead was on the left side, so I ran the wires under the motherboard and up by the right hinge.

... and from farther out.

Important!  Connecting the touchscreen to the LCD.

I read several eee PC hack reports of people breaking their touchscreens at this step, but everyone seemed to be using the thicker double-sided tape. I opted to used regular Scotch tape, double-sided. It's much thinner and it seems to work very well.  Make sure that you have no overlap onto the viewable areas of the LCD display.

A few closeups.

And now with the display bezel back on, the hinge should look something like this.  You may have some gap issues around the LDC display here... I'm not sure what to do about it at this point.  I permenant solution would be to epoxy it, but you're pretty much screwed if you have to take it off.  Another thing I'd like to see would be for the hinge to be able to travel all the way back 180 degrees flat.  Oh well.

Now, just put it all back together and start it up. On my computer, I attached the touchscreen controller to the left front USB plug, so that port is no longer usable. 

SOFTWARE:

One problem that I haven't completely fixed yet is the fact that the device is not recognized at startup by Linux. If I do a restart of udev (from terminal run sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart) it will recognized it without a problem. I did a dmesg dump and have the hardware settings, so I think I just need to find out where to register this and it should work. I welcome any Linux gurus out there to tell me where to do this.

NOTE: An interesting side effect of canibalizing the left front USB plug is that if you plug in a USB device (like a thumbdrive) into the “dead� plug and remove it, it will trigger an initialization of device recognition. Weird... but whatever.

You can download the drivers and the specs for this USB controller at http://home.eeti.com.tw/web20/eg/drivers.htm

I downloaded them, untarred it local, and ran the install script. From a command terminal, run the program TouchKit and root (sudo TouchKit), and step through the calibration process.  Windows and OS X users - do whatever their manual says.

ISSUES:

• Touchscreen is somewhat slow. I don't know if this is from the USB1.1 controller or just the computer's processor speed. (SEE UPDATE BELOW ABOUT THIS)
  
• While the touchscreen is very thin, it's still thick enough to cause the display bezel to stick up slightly, including around the outside. I may work on this some more, maybe use some stickier tape or glue it. 
• I really don't like the previously mentioned USB connection. I would rather have the USB controller connect to the internal USB hub, thereby freeing up the third USB port.

UPDATE 1!!!!!:

Internal USB hub connection

Well, after posting all the forum notes and whatnot, someone told me about the GPS hack and what I now call the “pin 36/38� hack. The guy who did this found out that the PCI-e WWAN connectors have a D+ and D- on pins 36 and 38, respectively. So, I went to work.

All I did was remove the bottom cover and snip the white and green D+/D- connections. The black and red lines are simply power supply and should not affect the USB port. I then soldered two separate wires to the #36 and #38 pins (see pic)

That's it. Right.  Easy and cake.  Bullsh!t.  It took me an hour to get the teeny-tiny hairlike wires connected.  Arg!
Put some electrical tape over these connections. The reason I didn't solder the white/green wires directly to the motherboard will soon become apparent. I cannot get the D+/D- lines correct to same my life. Of course I had them reversed, but now all I had to do was switch the wires instead of re-soldering them. Here's a final picture of the setup. Pin 36/Yellow goes to white, pin 38/white goes to green.

I also cut out a small square on the USB controller to allow the error LED to be seen from below. See my driver setup video on YouTube and you'll see why.

Final notes/comments/observations:

The case is not fitting as well around display. Has a gap now, but I guess that's to be expected. It could also be from the frequent times I removed/replace the display bezel. You mileage may vary here.

Another thing... tape a paper towel or some cushion to the back of your display. I had many small scratches on the surface after this project, and you want to keep your computer looking sharp.

Funny thing is that this will have to be revisited now that Dell is shipping the American computers with the WWAN filled... well, we still have the USB hack, I guess.

Once again, please send any sugestion/comments to mini9_at_restmass_dot_net (remove spam scrambling). 

Another thing - this Mini is for sale! 
I'm entertaining offers.  I'm not going to ask outrageous bucks for it, but would like to get most of my money back for it.  It's the 16Gb model with Ubuntu, and I have a nice red Timbuk2 carry case that goes with it.  Have all orignal manuals, DVDs, and the original 512 Mb memory module that went with it.  Oh, did I forget?  It also has a 2Gb SODIMM in it!  I might just go ahead and put it up on eBay this weekend.

UPDATE 2!!!
Shell script panel icon howto

• Open up a terminal window <Accessories, Terminal>
• type in vi touchscreen.sh<enter>, or use the editor of your choice to create the file
  
• press i and then type in the following
• /etc/init.d/udev restart
• press escape, then :wq<enter> - this saves and exits
• back and the command line, type chmod 755 touchscreen.sh  This changes it to an executable script.
• test it out from the command line by running as root.  Type sudo touchscreen.sh<enter>
• You should get a message and hear the logon sound again.  When the prompt returns, you're done and the touchscreen should work.
• To make a panel icon for ease of use:
• go up to the panel and right click on some empty space
  
• Click add to panel and select Custom Application Launcher, Add
  
• Name=<Whatever you want>
• Click Browse  and  it should open up in your home directory.  Select the script you created.
• After you select the file, go to the first line in the Command textbox and put the text gksu in front, with a space between the gksu command and the directory name (probably /home/...).  It should look something like this gksu /home/myusername/touchscreen.sh
  
• You can click on the left icon and change how it will appear in the panel, if you like
  
• Click OK and Close
• Done.  The icon should now appear in the panel at the top.  You can try it again now or the next time you start up.  The execution should ask you for your password again, but this is because you're running it as root.  You will not get any feedback except for the mouse cursor changing to a busy state, but you should hear the login sound again as it nears completion.
  

Many, many thanks to the mini and eee modders that paved the way for this hack.