trag

Could a flat CMOS battery (under the keyboard, IIRC) cause this problem? The laptop detects the SSD but can't remember what it detected later and must re-detect it.

The specific adapter for this purpose is the Sintech (manufacturer) PA6007 (model #), mini pci-e Msata SSD to 40pin ZIF adapter card as tohiba or hitachi zif hdd (list of buzz words). As far as I can tell, all the adapters are identical to this one. Of course, it's possible that some unknown factory in China is making them and Sintech is just another reseller. But the Sintech model number works and a seach on "Sintech Pa6007" will turn up units on Amazon, Ebay and Sintech's own direct sale website.

Thank you, once again, Herve. I appreciate the help.

I understand that the boot packs are being checked, updated if necessary, and rereleased. In the meantime, is there any possibility of getting a link to the old D430, Lion bootpack? I would wait patiently, and will, if necessary, but school just started here, and I'd like to set up a laptop for my son this weekend. He just found out that he needs one for his Chinese class and a D430 seems like the best option of the laptops in the house, given the elevated risk of theft, etc., taking to middle school brings. Thank you.

Repeat after me, "Herve is usually right...." I had the cable upside down. I felt pretty confident I had them right-side-up because I was careful to connect them the same way as with working hard drives. But... The Crucial M500s shipped with Amazon Prime did not arrive today, but should have. Probably get here tomorrow. In the meantime, Herve's suggestion kept reverberating in my brain. After reversing the cable orientation, the laptop saw the SSD with Sintech adapter. I should have been able to figure it out from the photos that ddiego posted. Slaps forehead. I am almost done installing Win7 on it as a test. OS X will have to wait for this weekend. Given that I tried it with the cable wrong a few days ago, apparently connecting the cable backwards will not fry the adapter, nor the SSD. I'm pretty sure I've read at least one review where someone claimed that having the cable backwards fried their adapter or SSD.

The M500s are already on the way. If they don't work, then I'll try the cable upside down. There is a risk that trying the cable upside down could apply power where it should not, although that should not be possible if the flex cable connector only has conductors on one side. I'm not sure about that though. They might have conductors on both sides.

Pretty certain. I compared the connector for the standard hard drive and the connector for the adapter and the cable orientation, and made certain to do it the same way. So, unless the adapter connector wants the cable inserted upside-down to the way the hard drive connector wants the cable, I got it right. With the hard drive or adapter board on the table, and the connector on top of the hard drive or on top of the adapter board, the cable goes into the connector with the exposed conductors on the underside (facing down) of the ribbon cable. Correct?

I tried the MydigitalSSD BP4 240GB mSATA SSD with Sintech adapter this weekend and it did not work. I tried three of them, in three adapters and none of them worked. So, unless I got three bad adapters, or three bad SSDs, or some combination thereof, the MydigitalSSD BP4 does not work with the Sintech adapter. MydigitalSSD's website's page for the BP4 states that it has a SATA III interface and is compatible with SATA II. No mention of SATA I compatibility and the Sintech adapter board uses a JMicron JM20330 chip which only supports SATA I (1.5 Gbps) on the SATA side. Sintech's website claims compatibility with MydigitalSSD brand, but I bet that was for the BP3. The BP3 is backwards compatible with SATA I. I could be wrong, but that's the evidence I have and my guesses. I have not heard back from MydigitalSSD tech support so far. It looks like Amazon will take them back and refund me without an issue -- I hope. I tried this brand and model because they have pretty good reviews and there was a Black Friday sale. I called Crucial support this morning, and the pleasant fellow I spoke with said that they have not tested it, and there could always be unknown problems awaiting, but he sees no reason why the M500 should not work with the SATA I interface on the Sintech adapter. So, I have three of those on the way now... Fingers crossed.

I have an aftermarket 9 cell battery for my Dell Latitude D430. It worked great for about a year. Recently, I think it was discharged too far. After that the external test yielded the flashing LEDs and the battery would not charge either while the machine was off and plugged in, nor under Windows. I tried various tricks like installing a good battery and then swapping batteries while the machine is plugged in and booted, but nothing helped. I noticed that OSX, on my other D430, actually provided more battery information in System Profiler than I can easily find in Windows. So I installed the battery in that machine, booted OSX, and it started charging the battery immediately. I've tested it for a while and everything seems fine. Various utilties report battery health as normal. So, if you have a battery which suddenly won't charge, before discarding it, try it in an OSX machine.

Wow. Thank you for all of the prior art and information. I don't know when I'll have time to experiment, but that will be very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate you sharing your experience.

A most concise description of the HD3000 solution. I wonder if there is an analogous solution for the D430's GMA950 to get the DVI port working: https://osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/1969-guide-for-enabling-vga-and-hdmi-in-intel-hd3000-gpu/?p=14333

Any chance that this will add support for the Secure Digital card reader on the D430? It looks like it's a driver compatible with the Ricoh chipset used on the D430 and PCI connection, but there are always pesky details....

Do you mean to connect the DVI monitor to the VGA port? Or do you mean to connect a VGA monitor to the DVI port? If the former, that would not meet my goal. I would like to achieve two external monitor support -- with the built-in LCD off. So I need the DVI port to work. If the latter, would it make a difference? Do you think the type/brand of monitor is affecting whether it is detected? However, I don't think a DVI-VGA adapter will work on the PR09S. The DVI port lacks the four analog signal pins that surround the single flat horizontal pin. Here is the article/forum post I was thinking of. I'm not sure if the link is going to work properly, so it's the third page of the thread and about 2/3 of the way down the page. This example is for the HD3000, but I wonder if something similar would work in this case to enable the DVI port? http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/259705-editing-custom-connector-info-for-intel-hd-3000-graphics-sandy-bridge-osx-lion/page-3 When I get some time I'll look into it, but if someone with experience would like to comment, I would enjoy reading your thoughts.

I had a little time this weekend to do some more testing, so I tried out multiple monitors on the D430 under Snow Leopard. First, I connected an older LCD panel directly to the VGA port on the back of the D430. This worked fine and operates in either mirrored or extended desktop mode. Next, I put the D430 into the Media Slice Dock (PR09S, I think). This is the dock which includes an optical drive and makes the D430 a little thicker and heavier. In the Media Slice, the VGA port still works great, however, do not use the FN F8 key to switch monitors. This switches the display to some frozen screen that looks like an old left-over display buffer from boot time. I don't know where in memory that is living. It's weird. If one uses the FN F8 key during the boot process (before the desktop appears) it will cycle the start-up screen between the built-in and external screen just fine. However, once OSX has detected and activated additional display devices (both displays lit) using the FN F8 key gets one the aforementioned display buffer crud and no way I could find to recover. I'm not sure if this FN F8 behaviour is the same when connected directly to the D430's VGA port (no dock) because I don't remember testing it's behaviour without the dock. Next, I connected a monitor to the DVI port. Snow Leopard refuses to acknowledge in any way that there is a monitor connected via DVI. However, if one uses the FN F8 key during the boot process, it will cycle the start-up screen (OSX Latitude emblem on gray background) from screen to screen, including the DVI monitor. I tried the DVI monitor both alone and with another display connected to the VGA port. The behaviour was the same in both cases. So, any ideas on how to get the DVI port to work? I remember reading an article somewhere (might have been here) about enabling a DVI or maybe an HDMI port on a Hackintosh. IIRC, it involved adding another entry to a Plist table for some kext related to displays or video cards. I'll see if I can find the page again. That might be a reasonable place to start. Is it possible that there simply isn't a plist entry for DVI monitors where one is needed? I'm treading far into my ignorance here, so please forgive and correct me if I make little sense.